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BR  1700  .P68  1909 
Powell,  Lyman  P.  b.  1866. 
Heavenly  heretics 


By  LYMAN  P.  POWELL 


The  Emmanuel  Movement 
The  Art  of  Natural  Sleep 
Christian  Science 
Heavenly  Heretics 


Heavenly  Heretics 


>>"         ._ »1»«J., .         >>A 


By 


Lyman  P.  Powell 


Author  of 
Christian  Science:    The  Faith  and  Its  Founder,"    "The  Art  of 
Natural  Sleep,"  "  The  Emmanuel  Movement  in  a  New  England 
Town,"    "Family  Prayers";    and    Editor   of  "Ameri- 
can Historic  Towns,"  etc. 


With   Portraits 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

Gbe  flmtcfterbocfeer  lpress 

1909 


Copyright,  1909 

BY 

LYMAN  P.  POWELL 


TSbc  Knickerbocker  press,  Hew  ffiorft 


To 
MY  TWO  SONS 

Talcott  Williams  Powell  and  Francis  Wilson  Powell 


PREFACE 

FOR  more  than  ten  years  past  it  has 
been  my  custom  to  speak  now  and 
then  from  my  Sunday  evening  pulpit,  of 
representative  preachers  who  have  pro- 
foundly influenced  the  religious  life  of 
their  contemporaries. 

The  chapters  which  make  up  this  little 
volume,  after  first  finding  expression  in 
the  pulpit,  appeared  at  weekly  intervals 
in  the  pages  of  The  Hampshire  Gazette, 
one  of  the  oldest  daily  papers  in  the  land, 
and  are  reprinted  here  through  the  cour- 
tesy of  the  editors. 

Books  in  abundance  have  been  written 
about  Edwards,  Wesley,  Channing,  Bush- 
nell,  Brooks.  In  some  volumes,  the  facts 
about  the  men  have  been  set  forth;  in 
others,  their  place  in  Church  and  State 
has  been  designated.  In  no  book,  per- 
haps, has  there  been  briefly  stated  all  the 


vi  Preface 

average  reader  wants  to  know  in  order  to 
visualise  as  well  as  understand. 

In  attempting  a  hitherto  neglected 
task,  I  have  realised  at  every  stage  the 
difficulty  of  both  interesting  and  edifying. 
To  meet  this  difficulty,  I  have  thought  it 
worth  while  to  make  full  use  of  local 
colour,  to  call  in  the  testimony  of  con- 
temporary listeners,  to  analyse  specific 
sermons,  and  through  the  gateway  of 
analysis  to  lead  on  to  each  man's  general 
philosophy  of  life,  and  finally  to  state 
the  salient  facts  and  illustrative  incidents 
in  every  instance  in  order  that  the  root- 
age as  well  as  the  fruitage  of  America's 
best  preaching  may  be  evident  even  to 
the  casual  reader. 

The  selection  of  an  appropriate  title  for 
these  pulpit  essays  was  a  problem.  From 
certain  points  of  view,  the  five  preachers 
might  to  some  appear  arch  heretics.  But 
if,  as  Coleridge  says,  heresy  signifies  "a 
principle  or  opinion  taken  up  by  the 
will  for  the  will's  sake, "  no  one  of  them 
ought  to  be  classed  as  a  heretic.  Their 
opinions  one  and  all  were  taken  for  the 


Preface 


Vll 


spirit's  sake,  not  for  that  of  the  will.  With- 
out denying  what  was  good  in  the  past, 
they  were  in  the  main  looking  for  a  larger 
faith  than  those  around  them  seemed  to 
hold.  That  which  was  said  of  the  men  of 
faith  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  could 
as  truthfully  have  been  remarked  of  them 
by  their  contemporaries, — "they  desire 
a  better  country,  that  is,  an  heavenly. " 
And  therefore  to  satisfy  both  the  con- 
ventional and  the  unconventional,  I  am 
venturing  to  present  this  little  book 
under  the  alliterative  title  of  Heavenly 
Heretics. 

L.  P.  P. 

St.  John's  Rectory, 
Northampton,  Mass., 
August  i,  1909. 


"The  ordinary  heretic  is  likely  to  prove  a 
mere  crank  and  eccentric.  Still,  there  arises  a 
heretic  every  now  and  then  who  is  simply  a 
surpassing  spiritual  genius,  and  leads  us  into 
wider  and  profounder  reaches  of  yet  undiscov- 
ered truth."— From  A  Valid  Christianity  for 
To-day  by  the  Rt.  Rev.  Charles  D.  Williams, 
D.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Michigan. 


CONTENTS 


Jonathan  Edwards 
John  Wesley 

William  Ellery  Channing 
Horace  Bushnell 
Phillips  Brooks  . 


3i 

57 

77 

in 


XI 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING  PAGE 


Jonathan  Edwards       ....         4 

From  the  engraving  by  John  Sartain,  after  the  paint- 
ing by  C.  W.  Peale 

John  Wesley        .....       34 
From  the  engraving  by  I.  Faber,  after  the  painting 
by  John  Williams 

William  Ellery  Channing  ...       60 

From  the  engraving  by  D.  Kimberley  and  J.  Cheney, 
after  the  painting  by  S.  Gambardella 

Horace  Bushnell         ....       80 
From  the  engraving  by  S.  A.  Schoff,  after  the  draw- 
ing by  S.  W.  Rouse 

Phillips  Brooks  .  .  .         .         .114 

From  a  photograph  from  life 


Xlll 


Jonathan  Edwards 


"From  the  days  of  Plato  there  has  been  no  life 
of  more  simple  and  imposing  grandeur." — The  West- 
minster Review. 

"Not  only  the  greatest  of  all  the  thinkers  that  Amer- 
ica has  produced,  but  also  the  highest  speculative  genius 
of  the  eighteenth  century." — A.  M.  Fairbairn. 

"He  that  would  know  the  workings  of  the  New  Eng- 
land mind  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  and  the 
throbbings  of  its  heart,  must  give  his  days  and  nights 
to  the  study  of  Jonathan  Edwards." — George  Ban- 
croft. 

"He  that  would  understand  .  .  .  the  significance 
of  later  New  England  thought,  must  make  Edwards  the 
first  object  of  his  study.  " — A.  V.  G.  Allen. 

"His  errors,  his  weaknesses,  his  great  inconsisten- 
cies, and  what  Prof.  A.  V.  G.  Allen  calls  'his  Inferno' 
have  had  altogether  too  long  a  history  in  New  England 
thought.  It  is  time  that  his  original  principle — the 
absoluteness  of  God — were  allowed  logical  and  unre- 
served expression." — George  A.  Gordon. 

"Absolute  sovereignty  is  what  I  love  to  ascribe  to 
God." — Jonathan  Edwards,  at  the  age  of  seventeen. 

"We  are  to  conceive  of  the  divine  excellence  as 
infinite  general  love,  that  which  reaches  all,  proportion- 
ately with  perfect  purity  and  sweetness ;  yea,  it  includes 
the  true  love  of  all  creatures,  for  that  is  His  spirit, 
or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  His  love." — Jonathan 
Edwards. 

"His  work  was  preaching  rather  than  the  cure  of 
souls. " — H.  T.  Rose,  the  present  incumbent  of  Jonathan 
Edwards's  pulpit. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

TT  is  Sunday  morning  in  Northampton, 
*  June  of  1 741.  The  church  toward 
which  the  people  make  their  way  is  not 
uncommon  or  impressive.  There  is  an- 
other somewhat  like  it  in  Boston  and 
Springfield,  in  Hatfield  and  Longmeadow. 
It  makes  no  sensuous  appeal  to  the  imag- 
ination. No  dim  religious  light  streams 
in  through  stained-glass  windows.  No 
long-drawn  aisles  lead  on  to  any  mys- 
tery-enshrouded altar.  No  deep-voiced 
organ  sends  rich  involutions  echoing  along 
a  fretted  ceiling.  The  First  Church  of 
Northampton  was  in  1741  conventional. 
The  place  and  people  were,  however, 
less  conventional.  Far  more  strategic 
in  its  situation  in  those  days  of  untracked 
wilderness  than  now,  Northampton  was 
as  beautiful.  The  twin  mounts  were 
already  keeping  vigil  over  river,  meadow, 
and  elm-shaded  town.  The  people  were, 
3 


4  Heavenly  Heretics 

in  spite  of  (perhaps  even  by  reason  of) 
all  the  isolation  and  the  hardship  of  their 
frontier  life,  among  New  England's  best. 
Thrifty,  high-spirited,  and  self-confident, 
Northampton  folk  even  at  that  early  day 
were  accumulating  wealth,  acquiring 
learning,  establishing  an  aristocracy  of 
brains  and  piety,  and  beginning  to  enjoy 
a  reputation  scarcely  second  to  Boston- 
ians  for  culture  and  religion. 

As  nearly  always  in  a  strictly  Puritan 
community,  the  service  is  a  trifle  tedious. 
The  prayer  is  long;  the  psalm,  lined 
out  by  the  deacon,  is  unmusically  sung. 
One  by  one,  the  congregation  file  up  to 
the  deacon's  high-backed  pew  and  place 
in  the  collection  box  their  Sunday  offer- 
ing. About  the  time  a  modern  service 
closes,  the  people  settle  down  to  give  ear 
to  the  sermon.  In  the  old-fashioned 
pulpit — "desk,"  they  called  it  then — at 
the  side,  not  at  the  end  as  now,  the 
preacher  stands  beneath  the  overarching 
sounding  board,  the  hour-glass  by  his  side, 
to  break  the  Word  of  Life. 

This  preacher  is  well  worth  the  respect- 


JONATHAN    EDWARDS 
From  the  engraving  by  J.  Sartain  after  the  painting  by  C.  W.  Peale 


Jonathan  Edwards  5 

ful  attention  of  the  twentieth  as  well  as  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  What  his  peo- 
ple could  not  know  we  know  beyond  dis- 
pute, that  he  was  the  greatest  preacher 
of  his  time  and  clime.  A  black  gown 
envelops  his  tall,  slim  form.  The  waving 
wig  one  sees  in  all  his  portraits  crowns 
his  broad  and  lofty  forehead.  The  oval 
face  with  its  clear,  piercing  eyes,  promi- 
nent nose,  thin  lips,  set  and  frequently 
severe,  is  always  serious  and  almost 
always  solemn,  in  spite  of  the  suggestions 
of  the  spirit's  sweetness  which  play  now 
and  then  about  the  mouth.  St.  Paul 
and  St.  John  composite  look  down  on  us 
from  that  highstanding  pulpit. 

The  preacher's  text  is  found  in  Deuter- 
onomy xxxii.,  35 — "Their  feet  shall  slide 
in  due  time. "  The  sermon,  terribly  ef- 
fective now,  is  to  be  preached  with  even 
more  effectiveness  in  a  few  weeks  at 
Enfield.  He  speaks  without  the  arts 
and  graces  of  the  orator.  His  pupil, 
Hopkins,  says  however,  that  his  deliv- 
ery is  "easy,  natural,  and  very  solemn. " 
His  voice,  though  clear  enough,  is  neither 


6  Heavenly  Heretics 

strong  nor  loud.  Calm  and  pale,  rapt 
and  grave,  he  seldom  moves  his  head 
or  hand.  His  manuscript,  which  he  de- 
plores, though  he  is  not  servile  to  it,  is 
"in  his  left  hand,  the  elbow  resting  on 
the  cushion  or  the  Bible,  his  right  hand 
rarely  raised  but  to  turn  the  leaves,  and 
his  person  almost  motionless.  "  It  is  the 
manner  that  appeals,  unperturbed  but 
earnest,  subdued  but  confident,  restrained 
but  authoritative.  'T  is  as  though  a 
volcano  were  in  eruption  according  to  a 
law  which  calls  it  to  activity  without 
uproar.  Mental  sweep,  relentless  logic, 
definite  conviction,  vivid  imagination 
turning  lurid  on  occasions,  large  and 
elevated  character,  to  which  the  episodic 
in  experience  and  utterance  are  alike  in- 
frequent,— these  and  kindred  gifts  con- 
tribute to  make  this  the  most  effective 
preaching  of  the  age. 

He  was  [says  a  biographer],  almost  too  great 
a  man  to  let  loose  upon  other  men  in  their 
ordinary  condition.  He  was  like  some  organ 
of  vast  capacity  whose  strongest  stops  should 
never  have  been  drawn. 


Jonathan  Edwards  7 

The  immediate  effect  is  indescribable; 
it  would  be  incredible,  were  there  not 
abundant  testimony  to  it.  Silence,  awe, 
alarm,  distress,  tears,  outcries  as  of 
animals  in  pain, — these  are  the  responses 
of  the  congregation  to  heart-searching 
and  heart-rending  preaching,  till  at  last 
the  preacher  has,  in  order  to  be  heard 
until  the  end,  to  speak  his  "  peace,  be 
still"  to  the  noise  and  the  confusion. 

What  gospel  is  it  that  can  so  disquiet 
and  distress  Northampton's  chosen  ?  The 
title  of  the  sermon  is  Sinners  in  the 
Hands  of  an  Angry  God.  Its  content  is 
Calvinism  at  its  boldest.  Sinners  in 
the  hands  of  an  angry  God  are  given  a 
terrifying  warning: 

The  wrath  of  God  burns  against  them;  their 
damnation  don't  slumber;  the  pit  is  prepared; 
the  fire  is  made  ready;  the  furnace  is  now  hot, 
ready  to  receive  them;  the  flames  do  now  rage 
and  glow.  The  devils  watch  them;  they  are 
ever  by  them,  at  their  right  hand;  they  stand 
waiting  for  them,  like  greedy,  hungry  lions  that 
see  their  prey,  and  expect  to  have  it,  but  are 
for  the  present  kept  back;  if  God  should  with- 
draw His  hand,  by  which  they  are  restrained, 


8  Heavenly  Heretics 

they  would  in  one  moment  fly  upon  their  poor 
souls.  The  old  serpent  is  gaping  for  them;  hell 
opens  its  mouth  wide  to  receive  them;  and  if 
God  should  permit  it,  they  would  be  hastily 
swallowed  up  and  lost. 

Now  he  presses  on  from  general  to 
particulars.  Lest  some  Northamptonian, 
confident  that  God  has  better  things  in 
store  for  him,  should  be  listening  un- 
moved the  preacher  says : 

The  God  that  holds  you  over  the  pit  of  hell, 
much  as  one  holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome 
insect  over  the  fire  abhors  you,  and  is  dreadfully 
provoked:  His  wrath  towards  you  burns  like 
fire;  He  looks  upon  you  as  worthy  of  nothing 
else,  but  to  be  cast  into  the  fire;  He  is  of  purer 
eyes  than  to  bear  to  have  you  in  His  sight; 
you  are  ten  times  so  abominable  in  His  eyes,  as 
the  most  hateful  and  venomous  serpent  is  in  ours. 

Then  comes  at  last  the  application 
grimly  personal: 

If  we  knew  that  there  was  one  person,  and  but 
one,  in  the  whole  congregation,  that  was  to  be 
the  subject  of  this  misery,  what  an  awful  thing 
it  would  be  to  think  of !  If  we  knew  who  it  was, 
what  an  awful  sight  would  it  be  to  see  such  a 


Jonathan  Edwards  9 

person!  How  might  all  the  rest  of  the  congre- 
gation lift  up  a  lamentable  and  bitter  cry  over 
him!  But  alas!  instead  of  one,  how  many  is 
it  likely  will  remember  this  discourse  in  hell! 
And  it  would  be  a  wonder,  if  some  that  are  now 
present  should  not  be  in  hell  in  a  very  short 
time,  before  this  year  is  out.  And  it  would 
be  no  wonder  if  some  persons  that  now  sit  here 
in  some  seats  of  this  meeting-house  in  health, 
and  quiet,  and  secure,  should  be  there  before 
to-morrow  morning.  Those  of  you  that  finally 
continue  in  a  natural  condition,  that  shall 
keep  out  of  hell  longest,  will  be  there  in  a  little 
time!  .  .  .  How  can  you  rest  for  a  moment  in 
such  a  condition?  .  .  .  Let  every  one  that  is  out 
of  Christ  now  awake  and  fly  from  the  wrath  to 
come.  .  .  .  Haste  and  escape  for  your  lives, 
look  not  behind  you,  escape  to  the  mountains, 
lest  ye  be  consumed. 

Shocking  doctrine  to  this  age  of  ours 
it  seems.  Where  did  Edwards  learn  it? 
Not  from  personal  experience.  Even 
while  a  child  he  had  assurance  of  his  own 
salvation.  At  an  age  when  other  boys 
were  interested  in  the  usual  adolescent 
problems,  Edwards  in  his  diary  describes 
his  inner  life  as  "  a  calm,  sweet  abstraction 
of  soul   from   all  the   concerns   of  this 


io  Heavenly  Heretics 

world;  and  sometimes  a  kind  of  vision 
or  fixed  ideas  and  imaginations,  of  being 
alone  in  the  mountains  or  some  solitary 
wilderness,  far  from  all  mankind,  sweetly 
conversing  with  Christ,  and  wrapped  and 
swallowed  up  in  God. " 

In  adult  life  he  was  first  and  last  ex- 
emplary in  all  relationships.  Though  lack- 
ing in  social  gifts  and  not  wont  to  visit  his 
parishioners  save  when  the  need  was 
urgent,  he  was  in  the  home  and  in  the 
town  and  in  the  church  conscientious  to 
a  fault,  trying  ever  to  lead  the  way  he 
pointed  out  to  others,  illustrating  by  his 
works  his  own  veracious  words  that  "the 
soul  of  a  true  Christian  appeared  like  a 
little  white  flower,  such  as  we  see  in  the 
opening  of  the  year,  low  and  humble  on 
the  ground,  opening  its  bosom  to  receive 
the  pleasant  beams  of  the  sun's  glory; 
rejoicing,  as  it  were,  in  a  calm  rapture, 
diffusing  around  a  sweet  f ragrancy ;  stand- 
ing peacefully  and  lovingly  in  the  midst 
of  other  flowers  round  about. " 

It  was  not  from  observation  that  he 
ever  learned  to  speak  of  human  beings 


Jonathan  Edwards  n 

as  "vile  insects,"  "filthy  worms,"  "fire- 
brands of  hell. "  To  be  sure,  his  flock 
were  fond  of  having  their  own  way. 
Even  in  his  great  predecessor's  ministry 
wilfulness  was  apt  to  lead  to  a  church 
quarrel,  and  contentions  were  the  order 
of  too  many  a  day.  But  his  flock  were 
no  worse  than  were  other  Christians  of 
the  time ;  they  were  thought  to  be  a  little 
better.  As  to  his  immediate  family, 
he  had  to  wife  a  woman  whose  wifely 
worth  tempted  George  Whitefield  when 
he  was  their  guest  to  abandon  his  fixed 
purpose  to  stay  single.  His  children 
were  almost  as  remarkable,  if  not  as 
famous,  as  their  parents,  and  the  Ed- 
wards family  have,  in  all  the  generations 
since,  stood  for  godly  character  and  ex- 
traordinary capacity.  Not  even  of  the 
one  black  sheep,  Aaron  Burr,  could  it  be 
truly  said,  while  he  was  still  a  baby  in 
the  arms  of  Edwards's  daughter:  "As 
innocent  as  children  seem  to  be  to  us,  yet, 
if  they  are  out  of  Christ,  they  are  not  so 
in  God's  sight,  but  are  young  vipers  and 
are  infinitely  more  hateful  than  vipers." 


12  Heavenly  Heretics 

This  babe-damning  doctrine  lay  at 
the  end  of  a  syllogism  which  started  with 
a  misconception  of  the  nature  of  things 
and  pursued  a  way  as  tortuous  as  it  was 
faultless  to  an  end  impossible.  Granted 
his  premises,  his  conclusion  followed 
irresistibly.  And  his  premises  were  Cal- 
vin's, and  before  Calvin,  St.  Augustine's. 
There  was  no  departure  from  the  time- 
worn  view  of  God  as  everything  and  man 
as  nothing;  of  God  as  absolute  and  omni- 
potent and  man  in  consequence  even  less 
than  incomplete  and  impotent.  It  was 
to  save  God's  freedom  to  Him  that 
Edwards,  treading  on  the  heels  of  Cal- 
vin, was  quick  to  take  man's  freedom 
from  him  and  to  dismiss  man  as  "  a  vile 
insect  that  has  risen  up  in  contempt 
against  the  majesty  of  Heaven  and 
earth. " 

In  later  years  he  modified  this  view  as 
much  as  he  dared  without  impinging  on 
its  central  principle.  He  gave  it  a  back- 
ground new  in  spots.  He  emphasised 
as  neither  Calvin  nor  St.  Augustine  did 
man's    inner    motives     and     affections. 


Jonathan  Edwards  13 

"  But, "  to  quote  Professor  Gardiner — "  as 
to  the  general  scheme  itself,  the  philo- 
sophy of  religion,  the  philosophy  of  life 
it  expresses,  there  is  nothing  in  that 
which  is  essentially  original  with  Edwards. 
In  standing  for  these  doctrines  he  but 
champions  the  great  orthodox  tradition.  " 
He  was  orthodox  from  first  to  last,  ac- 
cording to  the  tenets  of  New  England 
Puritanism.  He  had  to  be.  He  lacked 
the  special  gifts  of  the  originating  thinker. 
He  had  the  logic  of  the  mathematician 
and  the  imagination  of  the  poet,  but 
they  were  rarely  found  in  company  with 
historic  sense  or  common  sense  or  sense  of 
humour.  Imagine,  if  you  can,  a  sym- 
metrical personality  of  any  age  gravely 
declaring  that  "  although  the  devil  be 
exceeding  crafty  and  subtle,  yet  he  is 
one  of  the  greatest  fools  and  blockheads 
in  the  world.  "  Pushed  to  its  own  proper 
end,  the  logic  of  metaphysics  some- 
times runs  foul  of  the  logic  of  events 
and  pays  for  its  presumption  by  leading 
off  into  a  cut  de  sac,  wherein  Edwards 
sometimes  found  himself,  though  he  never 


14  Heavenly  Heretics 

knew  when  he  was  there  and  never  knew 
how  to  escape. 

Out  of  the  pulpit  there  was  perhaps 
one  Edwards  only,  a  firm,  precise,  and 
pious  soul,  aloof  from  all  his  kind  and 
unaware  of  his  aloofness.  In  the  pul- 
pit there  were  several  Edwardses,  and 
it  depended  on  the  circumstances  as  to 
which  you  found  there  on  occasion.  The 
Edwards  of  the  Enfield  sermon,  preached, 
tradition  tells  us,  in  Northampton  a 
short  while  before,  was  "the  flaming 
revivalist,  with  pitiless  logic  and  terri- 
ble realism  of  description,  arousing, 
startling,  overwhelming  the  sinner  with 
the  sense  of  impending  doom. "  But 
there  was  yet  another  Edwards  the  re- 
vivalist, who  could  plead  God's  love  as 
winsomely  as  in  the  Enfield  sermon 
he  called  down  the  wrath  of  God  upon 
the  unrepentant.  It  is  gratifying  to 
find  the  preacher  saying  in  another  ser- 
mon: 

God  is  infinitely  good  and  merciful.  Many 
that  others  worship  and  serve  as  gods  are  cruel 
beings,  spirits  that  seek  the  ruin  of  souls;  but 


Jonathan  Edwards  15 

this  is  a  God  that  delighteth  in  mercy ;  His  grace 
is  infinite  and  endures  forever.  He  is  love  itself, 
an  infinite  fountain  and  ocean  of  it. 

Edwards's  sermons  were  oftenest  per- 
haps distinctly  doctrinal.  Religion  was 
to  him  more  than  a  felt  relationship  with 
God :  it  was  describable.  It  was  a  scheme 
of  things  that  could  be  set  down  on 
paper  and  put  into  the  limits  of  a  sermon 
and  made  clear  to  the  darkest  under- 
standing that  would  give  attention  un- 
distracted.  It  was  more,  too,  than  a 
mere  skeleton:  it  was  a  skeleton  clothed 
in  the  warm  flesh  and  blood  of  conviction 
and  emotion  and  imagination.  No  mat- 
ter which  of  Edwards's  sermons  you  may 
chance  to-day  to  read  you  are  sure  to 
find  it  alive.  It  may  be  "evangelistic"; 
it  may  be  " doctrinal";  it  may  be  "occa- 
sional"; it  may  be  "practical."  What- 
ever it  may  be,  it  is  never  a  dead  thing. 
It  is  always  passionately  throbbing  with 
a  vitality  that  recks  not  of  the  passing 
years;  it  is  always  equal  to  the  final 
test  of  preaching,  that  whatever  be  the 
theme,  the  sermon  shall  come  from  the 


16  Heavenly  Heretics 

preacher's   heart,    not   merely   from   his 
head. 

Often  as  Edwards  emphasised  the  uses 
of  the  intellect  in  the  religious  life,  he 
never  put  mind  first;  he  knew  that 
personality  has  a  wider  range  of  vision 
than  the  mind  can  ever  furnish.  In  his 
exquisite  sermon  on  The  Reality  of 
Spiritual  Light,  where  Edwards  may 
be  found  at  his  purest,  he  makes  this 
point : 

There  is  a  wide  difference  between  mere  specu- 
lative, rational  judging  anything  to  be  excel- 
lent, and  having  a  sense  of  its  sweetness  and 
beauty.  The  former  rests  only  in  the  head; 
speculation  only  is  concerned  in  it :  but  the  heart 
is  concerned  in  the  latter. 

And  then  when  at  last  in  1750  he 
preached  his  farewell  sermon  to  the 
people  he  had  loved  and  to  whom  he 
had  preached  for  twenty- three  years,  he 
counselled  them  in  tender  words  to  choose 
for  his  successor  one  who,  whatever  gifts 
of  mind  he  had,  should  have  the  higher 
gifts  of  heart,  saying  "Nothing  else  but 


Jonathan  Edwards  17 

sincere  piety  of  heart  is  at  all  to  be  de- 
pended on,  at  such  a  time  as  this. " 

Born  of  good  Welsh  stock  October  5, 
1703,  fifth  in  a  family  of  eleven  chil- 
dren, Jonathan  Edwards  was  amazingly 
precocious  both  in  mind  and  heart.  He 
began  to  study  Latin  at  the  age  of  six 
and  at  the  age  of  eight  was  deeply  inter- 
ested in  spiritual  concerns.  At  ten  he 
wrote,  like  a  philosopher  of  forty,  a 
quaint  and  humorous  essay  on  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  and  at  twelve  an 
ingenious  paper  on  the  habits  of  the  flying 
spider.  Early  taught  by  his  distinguished 
father,  the  pastor  at  "Windsor  Farmes,  " 
Connecticut,  to  use  the  pen  abundantly, 
he  almost  from  the  first  was  accustomed  to 
study  with  his  pen  in  hand,  making  a 
record  of  his  doubts,  his  difficulties,  and 
his  comments  on  every  subject  which 
came  his  way  in  reading  or  in  thinking. 

At  Yale,  from  his  thirteenth  to  his 
seventeenth  year,  he  led  his  class,  and  yet 
found  time  as  early  as  his  sophomore  year 
to  read  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding   with    more   pleasure,  he 


1 8  Heavenly  Heretics 

informs  us,  "than  the  most  greedy  miser 
finds  when  gathering  up  handf uls  of  silver 
and  gold  from  some  newly-discovered 
treasure. "  It  was  also  in  those  days  at 
Yale  that  he  began  to  make  his  series  of 
Notes  on  the  Mind  and  Notes  on  Natural 
Science  and  to  work  out  the  principle  of 
that  idealistic  philosophy  which  underlay 
his  life-long  thinking.  More  important 
far,  he  was  by  conscious  effort  growing  all 
those  years  in  grace,  and  making  spiritual 
preparation  for  the  two  years  more  at 
Yale  of  theological  study. 

February  15,  1727,  after  eight  months 
of  ministry  to  a  Presbyterian  church  in 
New  York  City  and  two  years  as  tutor 
at  Yale,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four  he 
began  his  work  in  Northampton.  The 
position  was  not  easy  even  to  a  man  of 
Edwards's  gifts.  The  first  two  years  he 
was  assistant  to  his  remarkable  grand- 
father, the  Rev.  Solomon  Stoddard,  a  man 
as  strong  in  some  respects  as  Edwards 
and  in  others  strong  where  Edwards  was 
not  strong,  a  man  as  masterful  as  Ed- 
wards  and  more  practical  and   tactful 


Jonathan  Edwards  19 

and  in  consequence  more  popular.  To 
follow  his  grandfather  was  all  the  harder 
for  the  man  of  twenty-six,  because  he 
was  scrupulously  conscientious.  While 
paying  all  deference  to  the  prestige  of  his 
predecessor  and  nurturing  the  affection 
with  which  his  memory  was  cherished, 
Edwards  made  no  bid  before  or  after  Mr. 
Stoddard's  death  for  popularity.  Know- 
ing he  could  not  please  every  one,  he  was 
content  to  endeavour  to  please  God,  trust- 
ing that  the  sober  second  thought  of  his 
people  would  find  a  place  for  one  who  did 
his  work  in  his  own  way  but  did  it  faith- 
fully. 

Humble  to  the  verge  of  self-deprecia- 
tion, thinking  ill  of  his  own  talents  in 
comparison  with  his  distinguished  prede- 
cessor's, he  yet  took  himself  too  seriously 
to  waste  himself  in  what  seemed  to  him 
unprofitable  employments.  No  one  ever 
was  more  careful  in  the  use  of  time.  He 
lived  by  rule,  rising  before  five,  spending 
thirteen  hours  in  his  study  every  day, 
reading  the  Bible  and  every  book  of 
worth  he  could  lay  hands  on,  catching 


20  Heavenly  Heretics 

every  thought  that  came  to  mind  and 
putting  it  on  paper.  His  habit  of  note- 
taking  became  with  passing  years  so 
inveterate  that  even  while  he  was  at  his 
daily  exercise  on  horseback  he  was  wont 
to  jot  down  on  scraps  of  paper  stray  ideas, 
pin  each  scrap  to  his  coat,  and  come 
galloping  home  with  papers  fluttering  to 
the  breeze  from  shoulders,  breast,  and 
coat  tails. 

He  was  no  parish  visitor.  He  had  no 
small  talk  in  his  social  pack.  "  He  was 
not  able,  " — says  his  pupil,  Hopkins, — 
"to  enter  into  a  free  conversation  with 
every  person  he  met,  and  in  an  easy  man- 
ner turn  it  to  what  topic  he  pleased, 
without  the  help  of  others,  and,  it  may 
be,  against  their  inclination. "  And  so, 
though  not  disparaging  ordinary  parish 
visiting,  without  which  no  minister  can 
know  his  people  well,  he  confined  himself 
chiefly  to  visiting  those  in  need  in  body, 
mind,  or  soul,  and  let  the  others  come 
to  him  as  they  pleased  and  when  they 
pleased.  He  was  first  and  last  the 
preacher,  leaving  all  his  temporal  affairs 


Jonathan  Edwards  21 

to  the  good  management  of  Mrs.  Ed- 
wards, from  whom  he  learned,  second 
hand,  "  by  whom  his  forage  for  winter  was 
gathered  in,  or  how  many  milk  kine  he 
had,  or  whence  his  table  was  furnished." 
The  greatest  day  in  his  unusual  life, 
was  January  28,  1727,  when  Sarah 
Pierrepont  at  the  age  of  seventeen  be- 
came his  wife.  Allowing  as  generously 
as  one  may  for  the  well-known  rhapsody 
Edwards  the  lover  left  in  writing  of 
her  character,  the  fact  remains  indis- 
putable that  she  was  a  model  wife.  She 
never  tried  to  duplicate  her  husband. 
She  was  no  preacher  in  petticoats.  She 
knew  how  to  hold  her  tongue.  It  was 
not  she  who  brought  him  into  his  great 
trouble.  No  indiscretion  either  as  to 
word  or  creed  was  ever  charged  against 
her.  She  took  her  place  among  the 
women  of  the  church  a  mother  in  Israel 
with  her  ten  children,  born  in  Northamp- 
ton, receiving  with  gentle  grace  and 
modesty  the  deference  due  to  her.  She 
deemed  it  her  first  duty  to  give  her  hus- 
band the  right  conditions  for  his  highest 


22  Heavenly  Heretics 

usefulness.  She  relieved  him  from  do- 
mestic care,  guarded  him  from  needless 
interruption,  and  thus  contributed  as 
much  perhaps  as  he  to  his  effectiveness 
in  preaching.  She  was  all  the  wife  of 
any  minister  should  be,  and  deserved  the 
compliment  one  of  her  husband's  best 
friends  paid  her  when  he  hinted  that  the 
wife  had  found  a  shorter  road  to  heaven 
than  the  husband. 

These  two  simple-minded  children  of  a 
Heavenly  Father  whom  they  feared  far 
more  perhaps  than  there  was  need,  walked 
through  life  together  singularly  suited  to 
each  other,  dreaming  dreams  and  seeing 
visions  such  as  are  vouchsafed  only  in 
that  " House  Beautiful,"  of  which  it  has 
been  said  that: 

"Where  there  is  faith 

There  is  love. 
Where  there  is  love 

There  is  peace. 
Where  there  is  peace 

There  is  God. 
Where  there  is  God 

There  is  no  need." 


Jonathan  Edwards  23 

There  in  that  holy  home  on  King 
Street  lay  the  source  of  Edwards's  pulpit 
inspiration.  There  in  love  and  prayer 
the  great  man  grew  in  grace  and  in  the 
knowledge  of  his  Lord,  and  Sunday  after 
Sunday  whether  he  was  preaching  a 
doctrinal  or  evangelistic  or  practical 
sermon  he  gave  out  what  with  his  help- 
meet's aid  he  had  stored  up  at  home, 
the  week  before.  As  years  passed  by 
his  preaching  gained  momentum.  With 
increasing  eagerness  the  people  waited 
for  the  Sunday  morning  sermon  and 
then  talked  about  it  all  the  week.  While 
not  one  perhaps  of  all  his  flock  ever 
actually  suspected  what  we  know,  that 
Northampton  had  those  days  the  greatest 
preacher  in  the  land,  there  was  every- 
where increasing  assurance  that  there 
was  no  longer  any  need  to  go  to  Boston 
to  hear  good  sermons. 

By  and  by  came  the  Great  Awakening. 
It  had  been  foreshadowed  in  the  days 
of  Stoddard,  in  whose  ministry  630  were 
admitted  to  the  Church.  Throughout 
New  England  the  fierceness  of  Puritan- 


24  Heavenly  Heretics 

ism  had  for  years  been  burning  out. 
Austere  living  was  giving  way  to  care- 
lessness and  looseness  both  in  manners 
and  in  morals.  Piety  was  languishing 
and  irreligion  had  grown  arrogant.  Ed- 
wards became  more  anxious  every  year. 
He  grieved  and  prayed.  He  called  his 
people  back  beyond  the  days  of  Stoddard 
to  a  more  exacting  Puritanism  both  in 
creed  and  conduct.  With  all  his  ear- 
nestness he  preached  on  sin  and  its  sure 
punishment.  In  denunciation  he  had 
never  before  been  so  tragically  graphic. 
One  who  heard  him  preach  about  the 
Day  of  Judgment  said  a  little  later  "  that 
he  fully  supposed  that  as  soon  as  Mr. 
Edwards  should  close  his  discourse,  the 
Judge  would  descend,  and  the  final 
separation  take  place. " 

The  Sunday  morning  sermon  was  soon 
supplemented  by  two  more  Sunday  ser- 
mons. Then  people  came  in  crowds  on 
week-days,  too;  until  at  last  all  business 
was  at  certain  hours  suspended,  and 
everybody  asked  his  neighbours,  ''Breth- 
ren,   what    must    I  do    to   be  saved?" 


Jonathan  Edwards  25 

Of  the  physical  and  mental  phenomena 
called  forth  by  the  Great  Awakening 
there  is  no  need  to  speak.  Of  the  nervous 
stress  and  strain,  in  which  even  children 
shared,  the  least  said  possibly  the  better. 
"What  is  chiefly  important  to  note" — 
says  Dr.  Allen — "  is,  that  the  magnitude 
of  the  event  was  an  adequate  setting  for 
the  greatness  of  mind  and  character 
which  Edwards  now  reveals. "  Edwards 
saw  at  last  the  travail  of  his  soul  and  was 
satisfied.  Here  on  this  supreme  mount 
of  spiritual  exaltation  he  would  have 
stayed  forever  without  so  much  as  a 
tabernacle  to  remind  him  of  the  world- 
liness  below. 

To  make  his  people  fit  for  the  high  life 
he  lived  he  unwisely  tried  at  last  to  play 
the  role  of  a  dictator.  In  1744  he  ven- 
tured to  censor  the  literature  the  young 
were  reading  with  disastrous  consequences 
to  his  popularity.  Then,  after  four  years, 
from  the  first  applicant  in  all  those  years 
for  admission  to  membership  in  his  church 
he  demanded  evidence  of  conversion  and 
required  public  profession  of  faith.   Stod- 


26  Heavenly  Heretics 

dard,  with  whom  Edwards  was  still 
compared  and  by  some  to  his  under- 
valuation, had  been  wont  to  let  any 
baptised  person  come  to  the  Lord's 
Supper,  and  no  questions  asked.  The 
effort  to  improve  on  "  Stoddardeanism  " 
was  the  last  strain  on  Edwards's  popu- 
larity. Everybody — even  Edwards — ■ 
now  could  see  that  the  First  Church 
was  making  ready  for  a  change  of  pas- 
tors. 

The  unhappy  controversy  lasted  two 
long  years.  Edwards  through  it  all  was 
dignified,  but  insistent  on  his  rights.  His 
people  with  the  council's  aid  and  by  a 
vote  of  200  to  20  drove  out  upon  the 
world  a  faithful  minister  who  had  given 
them  twenty-three  years  out  of  the  heart 
of  his  rich  life,  who  was  too  old,  though 
but  forty-seven,  to  learn  any  new  method 
of  supporting  his  family  of  ten  children, 
and  who  could  scarcely  in  the  circumstan- 
ces expect  a  call  from  any  other  church. 
On  June  22,  1750,  Edwards  preached,  not 
bitterly,  his  mournful  farewell  sermon 
and  went  forth  into  exile  with  the  sad 


Jonathan  Edwards  27 

but  still  undaunted  heart  which  Dante 
took  with  him  from  Florence. 

Of  Edwards's  latest  years  there  is  little 
to  be  told.  Friends  in  Scotland  cor- 
dially invited  him  to  put  the  ocean  be- 
tween him  and  his  people  and  when  he 
would  not  go  they  sent  him  gifts  of 
money.  Stockbridge,  then  a  little  vil- 
lage farther  in  the  wilds,  called  him  in 
December,  1750,  to  be  its  minister,  and 
at  the  same  time  came  an  invitation 
from  the  "Society  in  London  for  Propa- 
gating the  Gospel  in  New  England  and 
the  Parts  Adjacent"  to  preach  the  gos- 
pel to  the  Indians  in  and  near  Stock- 
bridge.  The  next  year,  1751,  Edwards 
went  to  his  new  work  and  tried  to  do 
his  duty  as  though  the  light  of  preach- 
ing still  burnt  as  brightly  as  in  other 
days.  But  of  the  preacher  we  hear 
nothing  after  the  removal  from  North- 
ampton. The  Treatise  on  the  Freedom 
of  the  Will  is  the  best  output  of  those 
last  dreary  days, — and  it  is,  of  course, 
immortal  even  though  its  main  conten- 
tion is  still  in  dispute. 


28  Heavenly  Heretics 

In  1757  came  the  magnificent  vindi- 
cation of  a  call  to  be  the  President  of 
what  is  now  Princeton  University.  With 
much  misgiving  he  accepted  the  new 
charge  and  entered  on  his  duties  without 
eagerness  or  gladness.  But  the  next 
spring,  March  22,  1758,  he  died  of  vario- 
loid superinduced  by  vaccination,  whis- 
pering with  dying  breath :  "  Trust  in  God, 
and  ye  need  not  fear. "  « 

"  This  high  man 
With  a  great  thing  to  pursue 
Dies  ere  he  knows  it." 


Every  reader  who  would  understand  Jonathan 
Edwards  must  read  three  books:  Dr.  Allen's 
monumental  biography,  Professor  Gardiner's 
Selected  Sermons  of  Edwards  with  his  own 
excellent  introduction  and  notes,  and  the  ad- 
dresses delivered  in  connection  with  the  ob- 
servance of  the  150th  anniversary  of  Edwards's 
dismissal  from  Northampton.  Of  the  two  ear- 
liest biographies,  the  first,  which  "has  the 
quaint  charm  of  Walton's  Lives,"  is  from  the 
pen  of  his  pupil  and  intimate  friend,  Samuel 
Hopkins,  and  the  second,  specially  valuable 
because  it  brought  to  light  Edwards's  early 
papers  on  physics,  natural  history,  and  philo- 
sophy, is  the  work  of  Sereno  Edwards  Dwight. 
Trumbull's  History  of  Northampton  gives  the 
local  setting  necessary  to  the  appreciation  of 
Edwards's  relations  with  his  parish,  and  there 
are  various  editions  of  the  works  of  Edwards 
in  the  larger  libraries  of  the  great  cities. 


29 


John  Wesley 
1703-1791 


"The  greatest  figure  that  has  appeared  in  the 
religious  world  since  the  days  of  the  Reformation." — 
John  Richard  Green. 

"No  other  man  did  such  a  life's  work  for  England. " — 
Augustine  Birrell. 

"I  desire  to  have  a  league,  offensive  and  defensive, 
with  every  soldier  of  Christ." — John  Wesley. 

"I  live  and  die  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  no  one  who  regards  my  judgment  or  advice  will 
ever  separate  from  it." — John  Wesley,  writing  in  179 1. 

"He  took  his  stand  upon  his  father's  tomb,  on  the 
venerable  and  ancestral  traditions  of  the  country  and 
the  Church.  That  was  the  stand  from  which  he  ad- 
dressed the  world;  it  was  not  from  the  points  of  dis- 
agreement, but  from  the  points  of  agreement  with  them 
in  the  Christian  religion  that  he  produced  those  great 
effects  which  have  never  since  died  out  in  English 
Christendom." — Dean  Stanley,  at  the  unveiling  of 
the  Wesley  Tablet  in  Westminster  Abbey,  1876. 

"He  was  a  man  whose  eloquence  and  logical  acute- 
ness  might  have  rendered  him  eminent  in  literature; 
whose  genius  for  government  was  not  inferior  to  that 
of  Richelieu;  and  who  devoted  all  his  powers,  in 
defiance  of  obloquy  and  derision,  to  what  he  considered 
the  highest  good  of  his  species." — Lord  Macaulay. 

"I  look  upon  the  whole  world  as  my  parish." — 
John  Wesley. 


38 


JOHN  WESLEY 

A  GREAT  denomination,  that  of  Meth- 
*»  odism;  great  whatever  be  one's 
point  of  view;  great  whatever  the  cri- 
terion! Would  you  apply  the  test  of 
numbers?  Methodism  meets  the  largest 
expectations;  nay  more,  she  taxes  the 
credulity  of  those  who  do  not  know  about 
her  wondrous  growth.  The  Methodists 
in  this  country  outnumber  Episcopalians 
seven  times,  Congregationalists  at  least 
nine  times,  Lutherans  and  Presbyterians 
almost  four  times.  With  her  6,660,774 
members,  the  Methodist  Church  outstrips 
considerably  the  Baptist  Church;  she 
leads  all  the  Protestant  Churches,  and 
takes  her  place  next  to  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church  among  the  Christian  bodies 
of  the  land.  Surely  Methodism  ought 
to  have  the  full  respect  of  those  who 
find  a  charm  in  numbers.1 

1  The  statistics  were  compiled  in  1908.     The  writer 
3  33 


34  Heavenly  Heretics 

She  has  claims  too  on  those  who 
measure  greatness  by  influence.  In  many 
places  her  influence  is  immeasurable. 
It  well  may  be;  for  Methodism  has 
always  been  a  synonym  for  goodness, 
simple,  unaffected,  unmistakable,  and 
uncompromising.  On  every  public  ques- 
tion Methodists  have  usually  been  right, 
though  sometimes  injudicious.  In  their 
eagerness  to  have  the  best  accepted  by 
the  world,  they  have  sometimes  exposed 
themselves  to  the  serious  charge  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  has  often  made  against 
reformers,  of  sacrificing  the  possible  to 
the  unattainable,  but  their  purpose  has 
been  ever  pure.  Methodism  has  con- 
tributed powerfully  to  the  forces  which 
make  for  the  betterment  of  public  life, 
for  world-wide  peace,  and  world-wide 
federation.  In  her  splendid  history  she 
has  much  to  be  proud  of  and  little  to 
deplore.  To-day  she  prevails  with  men 
because  she  is  good,  and  great  goodness 

was  brought  up  a  Methodist  and  therefore  claims  the 
right  to  speak  with  some  appreciation  of  the  Methodist 
type  and  character. 


X         > 


I'.n.'.w  ..r  i.i.u i C'oitedge  orfwd 


JOHN   WESLEY 
From  the  engraving  by  I.  Faber  after  the  painting  by  John  Williams 


John  Wesley  35 

always  constitutes  an  undeniable  claim 
to  greatness. 

Nothing  perhaps  impresses  the  casual 
reader  of  her  history  so  much  as  her 
extraordinary  power  of  adaptation  to 
changing  and  to  changed  conditions. 
Springing  into  existence  when,  to  quote  a 
candid  writer  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
"the  dulness  of  spiritual  religion  in  the 
Church  of  England  was  slowly  chilling 
into  death, "  Methodism  came  like  John 
the  Baptist,  "preaching  the  baptism  of 
repentance  for  the  remission  of  sins." 
This  one  thing  she  did.  Nothing  else 
seemed  of  importance.  Her  machinery 
was  constructed  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
promoting  personal  piety  at  a  time  when 
religion  had  in  some  quarters  almost 
ceased  to  be  a  personal  concern.  Her 
preachers  were  evangelists  called,  like  the 
apostles,  from  their  shops  and  nets  and 
fields  to  warn  men  from  a  life  of  sin 
and  to  hold  up  before  their  sin-dimmed 
eyes  the  cross  of  Calvary.  Education 
was  not  counted  necessary;  by  some 
it      was     held     in     very     low     esteem. 


36  Heavenly  Heretics 

The  one  thing  required  in  a  preacher 
was  the  spirit  of  religion.  Having  that, 
he  could  well  forego  all  other  gifts.  He 
was  to  be  merely  an  itinerant  moving 
on  from  place  to  place,  never  tarrying  long 
anywhere.  And  so  the  itineracy  became 
the  central  feature  of  the  movement. 

By  and  by  the  need  of  a  settled  minis- 
try grew  evident.  The  teaching  function 
of  the  preacher  began  to  claim  a  place 
beside  the  preaching.  Men  who  had  been 
converted  and  were  trying  to  lead  the 
Christian  life  found  but  little  nourishment 
in  continuous  appeals  to  come  to  Jesus. 
Having  come  to  Jesus,  they  wanted  to 
learn  of  him,  they  wanted  to  be  taught 
the  truths  of  Christian  theology,  and  an 
ill  educated,  itinerant  ministry  could 
give  them  little  help.  Gradually  the 
leaders  of  the  movement  awoke  to  the  new 
necessities  of  the  case.  During  the  last 
half  century  they  have  placed  increasing 
value  on  education.  Colleges  and  uni- 
versities have  been  developed.  The 
standard  of  ministerial  efficiency  has 
been  raised.     The  teaching  function  has 


John  Wesley  37 

taken    its    place    beside    the    preaching 
function. 

The  itinerancy  has  been  gradually  dis- 
appearing before  the  need  of  a  settled 
ministry.  First,  the  three-year  limit 
was  adopted,  then  the  five-year  limit, 
and  at  last  the  time  limit  was  abolished 
altogether.  Now  a  preacher  may  with 
the  consent  of  the  Bishop  remain  as 
long  at  any  place  as  the  people  care  to 
have  him  stay.  This  change  is  the  more 
remarkable  because  it  is  the  virtual  aban- 
donment of  the  distinctive  method  of  the 
movement.  Being  such,  it  is  the  surest 
proof  that  could  be  given  of  the  complete 
willingness  of  the  largest  band  of  evangeli- 
cal Christians  the  modern  world  has  seen 
to  adapt  themselves  to  changed  conditions 
and  to  bring  men  to  Christ  at  any  sacrifice 
of  tradition  and  of  history.  If  adaptabil- 
ity gives  evidence  of  greatness,  Meth- 
odism is  very  great  indeed,  and  her 
greatness  may  well  be  recognised  by 
the  Mother  Church  whom  she  abandoned 
in  circumstances  that  can  give  small 
comfort  to  any  one  concerned. 


38  Heavenly  Heretics 

Emerson's  historic  hint,  that  institu- 
tions are  nothing  but  the  lengthened 
shadows  of  great  men,  finds  complete 
fulfilment  in  the  history  of  Methodism. 
From  the  first,  Methodism  has  been  the 
shadow  of  the  man  who,  measured  by 
his  deeds,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  recorded, 
says  Green,  as  the  greatest  figure  that 
has  appeared  in  the  religious  world  since 
the  Reformation.  All  the  distinctive 
features  of  the  Methodist  Church  were 
contributed  by  John  Wesley.  The  con- 
ference, the  circuit,  the  class  meeting, 
the  penitents'  meeting,  the  love-feast, 
the  watch-night  service,  the  rigid  disci- 
pline, the  governing  body  in  the  local 
church,  and  other  marks  of  Methodism 
were  placed  upon  it  by  the  father  of  the 
movement.  Every  Methodist  preacher, 
wittingly  or  unwittingly,  takes  John 
Wesley  for  his  pattern,  and  John  Wes- 
ley is  still  the  patron  saint  of  every 
pious  home  in  Methodism.  He  means 
something  to  a  larger  number  of  people 
in  this  country  than  Shakespeare  him- 
self, and  Epworth,  the  Wesley  home,  is 


John  Wesley  39 

a  pilgrim  shrine  precious  possibly  to  as 
many  as  St  rat  ford-on- A  von.  It  is  fit- 
ting that  a  man  so  dear  to  millions  should 
be  honoured  by  all  Christians  as  well  as 
by  his  own  denomination. 

There  have  been  greater  preachers 
than  John  Wesley.  In  sheer  oratorical 
power,  he  was  not  perhaps  the  equal  of 
his  colleague,  George  Whitefield,  whom 
Benjamin  Franklin  called  the  prince  of 
modern  preachers.  But  few  preachers 
have  ever  had  the  power  possessed  by 
Wesley  to  make  a  lasting  impression  on 
his  hearers.  Under  his  searching  words 
men  fell  as  fall  the  slain  in  battle.  He 
could  calm  a  howling  mob  and  melt  the 
hardest  heart.  Men  who  came  to  scoff 
remained  to  pray,  to  writhe  in  agony 
of  soul,  and  to  plead  with  God  to  put 
away  their  sins.  Yet,  there  was  nothing 
stormy  in  Wesley's  manner.  His  atti- 
tude was  easy,  his  action  was  controlled 
and  calm,  his  voice  not  loud  but  clear 
and  pleasing,  his  style  simplicity  itself. 
He  never  soared  among  the  clouds,  he 
used  no  far-fetched  terms.     Fine  sermons 


4°  Heavenly  Heretics 

he  abhorred.  He  seemed  sometimes  to 
be  the  teacher  rather  than  the  preacher 
in  the  pulpit.  The  words  that  rippled 
over  his  lips  like  a  brook  that  babbles 
as  it  makes  its  way  in  half-broken  silence 
to  the  sea  always  carried  home,  though 
no  one  knew  just  why. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  it  was 
the  unusual  combination  of  unusual  quali- 
ties in  the  man  that  gave  weight  to  his 
words.  His  preaching  may  not  have 
had  the  Demosthenic  eloquence  that 
rang  through  Whitefield's  words;  but  it 
had  what  Whitefield's  preaching  never 
had,  a  rare  combination  of  "  the  accuracy 
of  a  scholar,  the  authority  of  an  ambas- 
sador, the  unction  of  a  saint,  the  power 
of  God."  It  was  always  searching;  but 
not  often  terrible  or  severe,  except  when 
addressed  to  congregations  respectable, 
rich,  and  well  contented  with  them- 
selves. 

Once  a  friend  of  Wesley  was  shocked 
to  hear  him  preach  to  a  well-groomed 
congregation  a  scathing  sermon  from  the 
text,    "  Ye  serpents,    ye   generation     of 


John  Wesley  41 

vipers,  how  can  ye  escape  the  damnation 
of  hell?"  "Sir,"  said  Wesley's  friend, 
incensed,  "such  a  sermon  would  have 
been  suitable  in  Billingsgate;  but  it  is 
highly  improper  here. "  Wesley  quietly 
replied:  "If  I  had  been  in  Billingsgate, 
my  text  should  have  been,  "  Behold  the 
lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sins 
of  the  world."  It  was  the  perfect  fear- 
lessness of  Wesley  in  an  age  when  many 
preachers  were  cowardly,  when  the  poor 
too  often  received  sermonic  drubbings  and 
the  rich  sermonic  flattery,  that  made  Wes- 
ley powerful  among  all  classes.  Men  came 
with  the  expectation  of  hearing  the  truth, 
fresh  and  undiluted  by  cringing  regard 
for  wealth  or  social  prestige,  and  they 
were  seldom  disappointed.  Wesley  al- 
ways spoke  his  mind  without  fear  or 
favour,  and  he  never  cast  an  anchor  to 
windward. 

Had  he  been  asked  what  new  doc- 
trine he  taught,  he  would  probably  have 
answered  in  surprise,  "  None,  I  am  merely 
a  good  Churchman."  The  fact  is  he 
did  say  in  1739,  "I  simply  describe  the 


• 


42  Heavenly  Heretics 

plain,  old  religion  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. "  His  doctrines  all  are  found  to- 
day in  the  Prayer-Book  of  that  Church. 
Wesley  added  nothing  to  the  teachings 
of  the  Church.  He  did  this,  however: 
He  took  out  of  their  setting  two  or  three 
of  her  most  important  doctrines  to  meet 
the  special  needs  of  the  time.  He  used 
them  to  the  neglect  of  other  doctrines, 
and  he  so  impressed  them  on  the  move- 
ment which  he  started  that  there  is  still 
to-day,  perhaps,  a  tendency  to  emphasise 
them  at  the  expense  of  other  teachings 
as  important  now  as  were  the  special 
theories  of  Wesley  in  his  day. 

"Our  main  doctrines,  which  include 
all  the  rest,"  says  Wesley,  "are  three: 
that  of  repentance,  of  faith,  and  of 
holiness.  The  first  of  these  we  account, 
as  it  were,  the  porch  of  religion;  the  next, 
the  door;  the  third,  religion  itself." 
Turn  the  pages  of  your  Prayer-Book  and 
you  will  find  that  Wesley  followed  closely 
the  natural  division  of  the  Church  Cate- 
chism which  Anglican  children  study 
every  Sunday  in  the  Sunday-school.     In 


John  Wesley  43 

season  and  out,  he  preached  repentance. 
' '  Repentance  absolutely  must  go  before 
faith,  "  was  his  continuous  cry.  He  placed 
the  new  birth,  as  he  called  it,  on  a  level 
with  justification  by  faith,  and  when  he 
was  not  preaching  the  one  he  was  always 
preaching  the  other.  The  consequence 
was  inevitable.  Religion  ceased  to  be  a 
mere  convention  which  men  put  on  or 
off  as  they  put  on  their  clothes  or  took 
them  off.  It  became  real  and  personal. 
It  clutched  the  hearts  of  men.  It  gripped 
the  soul.  It  laid  the  conscience  bare  to 
God,  and  put  into  men's  mouths  a  new 
song.  No  wonder  the  Church  historian 
acknowledges  that  the  revival  of  personal 
religion  in  England  is  due  to  John  Wesley. 
No  man  can  wrest  that  honour  from 
John  Wesley.  No  man  well  informed  will 
ever  try. 

About  his  pedigree — he  came  of  gen- 
tle, though  not  noble  parentage.  Per- 
haps the  fact  that  he  was  born  a  gentle- 
man gave  him  that  delicacy  in  dealing 
with  the  poor  which  is  rarely  found  in 
those  not  to  the  manor  born.    His  father, 


44  Heavenly   Heretics 

Samuel,  was  honest  but  rather  common- 
place. His  mother,  Susanna,  ranks  among 
the  most  extraordinary  mothers  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  To  her  more  than 
to  all  others,  John  Wesley  owed  his  piety, 
his  energy,  and  his.  indomitable  will.  It 
was  from  her  that  incidentally  he  ac- 
quired his  profound  belief  in  the  active 
interference  of  spiritual  agents  in  the 
affairs  of  this  life,  which  even  flowered 
out  into  belief  in  ghosts  and  witches. 

At  Oxford,  where  he  became  a  Fellow 
in  1726,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  his 
religious  life  took  on  its  lasting  form. 
Dissatisfied  with  the  careless  living  of 
many  of  the  students  and  with  the 
cheap  scepticism  which  ran  riot  through 
the  College,  Wesley  joined  the  little  club 
of  spiritually  minded  students  which 
his  brother  Charles  had  organised  a 
while  before  to  promote  personal  piety 
in  the  College,  and  at  once,  by  reason 
of  his  great  ability  and  unusual  spiritu- 
ality, became  the  leader  of  the  band. 
Their  devoutness  brought  them,  as  de- 
voutness  often  does,  the  ridicule  of  those 


John  Wesley  45 

who  lack  devoutness.  They  were  called 
ill  names  of  various  sorts :  "  Bible  Bigots,  " 
" Bible  Moths,"  "The  Godly  Club," 
"  The  Holy  Club,  "  and  last  of  all,  because 
they  regulated  all  their  days  with  nice 
precision,  "Methodists."  The  name  of 
Methodists,  thus  given  to  them  in  deris- 
ion, they  finally  accepted  in  all  serious- 
ness, and  their  descendants  to  this  day 
are  proud  to  retain  it. 

In  1732  a  Royal  Charter  was  granted 
for  the  settlement  of  Georgia.  Wesley 
went  out  with  the  first  expedition,  and 
in  1736  became  minister  in  charge  of 
Christ  Church,  Savannah.  He  tried  there 
to  duplicate  his  Oxford  scheme  of  life. 
A  High  Churchman  of  the  most  precise 
type,  he  tried  to  force  his  views  upon  the 
little  settlement.  He  forgot  that  the 
Church  is  catholic  before  all  else,  that 
there  is  room  enough  for  all  types  within 
her  ample  fold.  His  mistaken  zeal  es- 
tranged the  people  from  him.  He  con- 
verted estrangement  into  actual  hostility 
by  his  folly  in  respect  to  a  young  woman 
whom  he  repelled  from  the  Holy  Com- 


46  Heavenly  Heretics 

munion  because  she  declined  to  marry 
him.  And  when  at  last  the  gathering 
storm  of  public  indignation  seemed  about 
to  break  upon  his  head,  he  fled  back 
to  England,  lamenting  his  mistakes 
and  seeking  God's  forgiveness  for  his 
folly. 

Of  his  life  in  England  in  the  years 
that  followed  there  is  little  time  to  speak. 
His  labours  were  multiple  indeed  and 
varied.  He  was  one  of  the  hardest 
workers  of  the  century.  The  days  were 
not  long  enough  for  all  the  things  he 
cared  to  do,  even  though  he  rose  at  four 
o'clock.  The  new  religious  impulse  that 
came  into  his  life  in  1738  made  him  the 
foremost  religious  leader  of  the  century. 
Though  he  was  an  ordained  minister  of 
the  Church  of  England,  that  was  no 
barrier  to  the  widening  fields  of  usefulness 
which  lay  before  him.  When  he  found 
men  would  not  come  to  church  he  went 
out  into  the  highways  and  the  byways. 
He  preached  to  the  miners  in  their  dark- 
ness, to  the  Newgate  felons  in  their 
loathsome  cells,  to  the  sick  and  suffering 


John  Wesley  47 

in  the  hospitals,  as  well  as  to  the  wealthy 
and  refined  in  St.  John's. 

He  seemed  to  many  English  Church- 
men to  be  unduly  negligent  of  the 
ordinary  agencies  of  the  Church.  He 
seemed  to  many  to  appeal  too  much  to 
men's  emotions,  and  too  little  to  their 
judgment.  There  were  certain  extrava- 
gances in  his  services  which  he  ap- 
peared clearly  to  encourage.  To  hear 
members  of  his  congregation  shouting 
out  Amen,  interrupting  the  services  by 
groans  and  cries,  tossing  and  writhing 
on  the  ground  as  though  in  agony, 
seemed  to  the  higher  class  of  Englishmen 
indecorous  if  not  indecent,  and  they  held 
John  Wesley  to  account  for  not  sup- 
pressing what  seemed  to  them  disorder. 
More  than  this,  by  his  insistence  on  the 
need  of  conscious  conversion,  of  the 
same  type  of  religious  experience  in  all 
cases,  he  made  it  impossible  for  a  bishop 
or  priest  of  the  Church  of  England  to 
join  him  in  a  movement  which  the  whole 
Church  came  later  to  recognise  as  in 
the  main  commendable.     The  majority 


48  Heavenly  Heretics 

of  Churchmen  considered  it  indelicate 
to  talk  so  openly  about  their  inmost 
feelings  as  Wesley  seemed  to  wish  that 
Christians  should  do. 

At  last  the  churches  were  no  longer 
open  to  him;  even  the  hospitals  and 
prisons  were  denied  him  and  his  follow- 
ers. The  streets  and  fields  and  moun- 
tain sides  alone  were  friendly,  and  there 
in  the  open,  under  the  dome  of  the  blue 
sky,  in  God's  great  temple  of  nature, 
the  Methodists  grew  into  countless  thou- 
sands. When  they  became  too  numerous 
for  easy  handling,  Wesley  broke  them  up 
into  classes,  set  over  each  a  leader,  and 
sent  earnest  and  fluent  speakers  out  to 
travel  over  circuits  and  to  preach  the 
gospel  wherever  they  could  get  a  hearing. 
Such  organisations  as  the  Methodist 
Church  has  to-day,  in  the  main  he  gave 
her  in  those  days  of  bitter  ostracism.  He 
exercised  more  power  than  any  bishop  of 
the  Anglican  communion. 

His  labours  seem  in  the  retrospect  in- 
credible.    Recall  some  of  them. 

During  a  period  of  fifty-four  years  he 


John  Wesley  49 

averaged  some  five  thousand  miles  a  year, 
mostly  on  horseback.  He  preached  on 
an  average  fifteen  sermons  a  week, 
making  altogether  almost  fifty  thou- 
sand. He  always  had  a  book  in  hand 
while  he  was  travelling,  and  it  must 
have  been  a  strange  sight  to  see  the  little 
slender  man  astride  his  horse,  his  long 
hair  given  to  the  winds,  his  saintly  face 
buried  in  a  book,  putting  miles  behind 
him.  The  number  of  his  books  and 
publications  will  scarcely  be  credited  by 
the  uninformed.  There  were  several  hun- 
dred altogether,  among  them  grammars 
of  the  Greek,  Hebrew,  Latin,  French,  and 
English  languages,  a  commentary  in 
four  volumes  on  the  Bible,  a  dictionary  of 
the  English  language,  a  history  of  Rome, 
a  good-sized  work  on  electricity,  three 
books  on  medicine,  seven  large  octavo 
volumes  of  sermons,  controversial  papers, 
and  journals.  "Few  men  could  have 
travelled  as  much  had  they  omitted  all 
else.  Few  could  have  preached  as  much 
without  either  travel  or  study.  And  few 
could    have   written    and    published    as 


50  Heavenly  Heretics 

much  had  they  avoided  both  travel  and 
preaching."  No  minister  in  Christian 
history  has  ever  done  more  things  than 
the  originator  of  the  Methodist  denomi- 
nation. He  is  the  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
of  the  Christian  Church.  No  wonder  he 
once  remarked:  " Leisure  and  I  have 
taken  leave  of  each  other. "  And  yet  he 
was  never  in  a  hurry.  "  Always  in  haste, 
but  never  in  a  hurry,  "  was  his  motto. 

Long  before  the  American  Revolution 
broke  out,  the  Methodist  movement  was 
growing  unwieldy  for  one  man  to  han- 
dle, even  though  a  man  of  genius. 
It  reached  America  in  1767.  It  had  al- 
ready spread  over  the  British  Islands. 
The  great  test  had  come.  Could  Wesley 
keep  the  movement  in  the  Church  or 
would  he  let  it  slip  away  ?  That  was  his 
hard  problem.  He  solved  it  perhaps  as 
well  as  any  man  could  in  the  circum- 
stances solve  it.  From  the  first  he  had 
carefully  and  strenuously  insisted  that 
Methodism  was  to  be  always  a  society 
within  the  Mother  Church.  When  he 
sent  out  ministers  to  Scotland  and  Amer- 


John  Wesley  51 

ica,  he  was  careful  to  remind  them  that 
''this  is  not  separation. "  Even  after 
the  formal  organisation  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  had  taken  place  in  1 784, 
he  refused  to  see  that  it  was  practically 
equivalent  to  a  separation.  He  cried 
out  in  very  pain  of  soul: 

I  never  had  any  design  of  separating  from 
the  Church;  I  have  no  such  design  now.  I  do 
not  believe  that  Methodists  in  general  design 
it  when  I  am  no  more  seen.  I  do,  and  will  do, 
all  in  my  power  to  prevent  such  an  event. 
None  who  regard  my  judgment  or  advice  will 
ever  separate  from  it. 

The  very  last  year  of  his  life  he  wrote  to 
one,  "  I  live  a  member  of  the  Church  of 
England  and  die  a  member  of  the  Church 
of  England,"  and  to  another:  "The 
Methodists  in  general  are  members  of  the 
Church  of  England.  They  hold  all  her 
doctrines,  attend  her  services,  and  par- 
take of  her  sacraments. " 

Why  then  did  the  greatest  catastrophe 
in  the  last  three  centuries  of  the  Christian 
Church  occur? — for  the  separation  of  the 
Methodist  denomination  from  the  Mother 


52  Heavenly  Heretics 

Church  was  for  the  cause  of  Christianity 
at  large  exactly  that.  Wesley  was  in 
part  to  blame.  There  were  flaws  in  his 
personality  which  were  responsible  in 
part  for  the  undoing  of  his  work  when 
the  crisis  came.  Though  his  powers  were 
gigantic,  he  had  not  full  knowledge  of 
men.  He  was  too  guileless  to  acquire  it. 
He  did  not  know  how  to  have  his  own 
way,  and  retain  the  loyalty  of  those 
around  him.  He  lacked  the  saving  grace 
of  s avoir  faire.  When  he  needed  most 
the  counsel  of  his  brothers,  they  were 
not  at  hand;  the  one  because  he  doubted 
his  sincerity,  the  other  because  after 
innumerable  experiences  with  women, 
which  proved  that  he  had  never  pro- 
fited by  his  Georgia  escapade,  John 
made  a  wretched  marriage  at  the  mature 
age  of  forty-eight,  and  was,  until  his  wife 
deserted  him,  a  hen-pecked  saint.  At  a 
time  when  he  needed  the  wisest  counsel, 
there  were  no  wise  men  close  enough  to 
him  to  give  it. 

The  Mother  Church  too  made  a  blunder. 
When  the  movement  of  Loyola  began  to 


John  Wesley  53 

give  large  promise,  the  Church  of  Rome 
with  characteristic  wisdom,  gathered  it 
into  her  fold  and  made  use  of  its  resistless 
energy  and  enthusiasm.  When  the  time 
came  to  make  special  provisions  for  the 
retention  of  Methodism  within  the  Church 
of  England,  the  Bishop  of  London,  singu- 
larly blind  to  the  signs  of  the  times,  de- 
clined Wesley's  request  for  two  priests 
who  could  administer  the  Sacraments 
to  American  Methodists.  Despairing  of 
securing  the  recognition  and  the  help  the 
Mother  Church  might  well  have  given, 
Wesley,  not  without  trepidation,  sent 
Coke  and  Asbury  to  act  as  "superinten- 
dents" over  the  sea.  They  were  ambi- 
tious to  be  bishops  and  soon  assumed 
the  title,  to  the  disgust  of  Wesley,  who 
wrote  to  Asbury :  "  How  can  you,  how 
dare  you  suffer  yourself  to  be  called 
Bishop?  I  shudder,  I  start  at  the  very 
thought." 

American  Methodists  were  alienated 
from  the  mother  country  by  the  Revolu- 
tion. An  ocean  was  between  them  and 
John  Wesley.     The  ligature  which  bound 


54  Heavenly  Heretics 

them  to  the  Mother  Church  was  sorely 
strained,  and  while  Wesley  sat  at  home 
and  sent  warning  letters  and  anathemas 
across  the  sea,  the  cord  snapped  and 
Methodism  broke  away  of  its  own  weight 
from  the  Church  of  England. 

The  loss  was  mutual  and  very  great. 
The  Mother  Church  lost  some  of  the 
enthusiasm,  the  emotionalism,  the  con- 
scious experience,  the  unfeigned  piety 
for  which  Methodism  stands.  And  Meth- 
odism lost  in  part  the  ethical  strenu- 
ousness,  the  broad  liberality,  the  whole- 
some reasonableness,  and  the  true 
Catholicity,  which  have  in  the  main  been 
characteristic  of  the  Church  of  England. 

Now  in  these  days  when  the  Episcopal 
Church  is  regaining  part  of  what  she  lost, 
and  as  the  General  Conference  of  1900 
proves,  Methodism  has  set  her  face  to- 
ward the  good  things  she  abandoned 
when  she  went  out  from  the  Mother 
Church,  the  old  relations  might  well  be 
resumed  in  Christian  love  and  unity. 
The  theology  of  the  Anglican  and  the 
Methodist  is  practically  the  same;  their 


John  Wesley  55 

ecclesiastical  pedigree,  and  their  purpose 
too.  In  fact,  however  it  may  be  in  the- 
ory, they  stand  exactly  where  John  Wes- 
ley stood  and  with  him  they  can  truly 
say,  We  desire  to  have  a  league,  offen- 
sive and  defensive,  with  every  soldier  of 
Christ.  They  have  not  only  one  Lord, 
one  faith,  one  baptism,  but  they  are  also 
engaged  in  one  warfare, — the  warfare 
against  sin  in  every  form,  in  every  place, 
in  every  age. 


Many  of  the  books  which  have  been 
written  about  John  Wesley  have  the  same 
temporary  and  contemporary  value  as  the 
quadrennial  campaign  biographies  of  our  Presi- 
dential nominees.  Of  all  the  earlier  biographies 
Southey's  is  most  readable,  Whitehead's  most 
credible.  Of  recent  biographies  the  two  most 
charming  and  authentic  are  Winchester's  and 
Overton's.  McConnell's  history  of  the  Episco- 
pal Church  is  nowhere  more  suggestive  than  in 
its  treatment  of  John  Wesley.  For  unconven- 
tionally in  view-point  Snell's  will  always  have 
peculiar  interest,  as  will  also  Little's,  written 
from  a  unique  standpoint.  Tyerman's  three 
volumes  and  Wesley's  published  sermons  will 
doubtless  long  continue  as  they  long  have  been 
the  mine  which  every  serious-minded  student 
will  most  deeply  work  for  the  facts  procurable. 


56 


William  Ellery  Channing 

1780-1842 


57 


"The  most  eminent  representative  of  the  Unitarian 
movement  in  this  country." — George  P.  Fisher. 

"He  was  one  of  the  spiritual  forces  of  his  time,  and 
his  watchwords  are  everywhere  incorporated  into  life. " 
— D.  D.  Addison. 

"Channing,  if  not  a  Christian  theist,  approximated 
that  standing.  "—J.  W.  Chadwick. 

"The  differences  between  Unitarians  and  Trinitarians 
lie  more  in  sounds  than  in  ideas. " — Channing. 

"Channing  would,  if  alive  now,  find  himself  more  at 
home  in  the  Episcopal  Church  than  in  many  of  the 
Unitarian  ones." — Edward  S.  Drown. 

"I  wish  to  regard  myself  as  belonging  not  to  a  sect, 
but  to  the  community  of  free  minds,  of  lovers  of  truth 
and  followers  of  Christ,  both  on  earth  and  in  heaven. " — 
Channing. 


58 


WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

UNITARIANISM  is  almost  as  old  as 
Christianity.  Unitarians  there  have 
been  from  the  earliest  centuries.  The 
most  eminent  of  all  came  late  in  Unita- 
rian history. 

William  Ellery  Channing  was  more  than 
preacher.  His  latest  interpreter  has  said 
that  "Channing's  best  work,  his  purest 
prophecy,  was  more  upon  the  social  side 
than  on  the  theological. "  Publicist,  phi- 
lanthropist, patriot,  semi-socialist,  there 
was  no  public  movement  of  importance 
either  side  the  ocean  that  escaped  his 
interest;  scarcely  one  about  which  he 
failed  to  write  or  speak.  Though  he  was 
late  in  giving  comfort  to  the  Abolition 
movement,  he  was  always  striking  in 
his  own  way  at  slavery.  "  Always  young 
for  liberty, "  he  was  prompt  to  apprehend 
the  import  of  the  Revolution  of  1830  and 
59 


60  Heavenly  Heretics 

to  rebuke  the  blindness  of  New  England 
to  it.  He  took  up  early  with  socialism 
and  admired  the  Brook  Farm  scheme 
and  its  promoters,  though,  fortunately, 
for  his  comfort,  from  afar. 

A  peace  man  at  a  time  when  all  the 
world  seemed  bent  on  letting  slip  the  dogs 
of  war,  the  Massachusetts  Peace  Society 
was  organised  in  his  house,  though  till  the 
end  he  held  to  the  opinion  that  "  some- 
times we  must  fight."  Against  intem- 
perance, his  influence  was  ever  cast, 
though  he  never  for  a  moment  thought 
that  law  could  bring  the  evil  to  an  end. 
In  his  views  on  education,  he  anticipated 
Bushnell  and  proved  a  friend  and  helper 
to  Horace  Mann  when  Mann  had  need  of 
both.  With  prison  reformers  on  either 
side  the  ocean  he  kept  in  friendly  con- 
tact, purveyed  their  facts,  and  made  their 
theories  popular.  His  interest  in  the 
problems  of  the  poor  deepened  with  the 
years  and  widened  so  amazingly  that 
Mr.  W.  M.  Salter  says  that  "Channing 
was  ahead,  not  only  of  his  own  time, 
but  ours. " 


WILLIAM    E.  CHANNING 

From  the  engraving  by  D.  Kimberley  and  J.  Cheney  after  the  painting  by 

S.  Gambardella 


William  Ellery  Channing       61 

By  parentage  and  circumstances,  by 
education  and  acquirements,  Channing 
was  prepared  if  not  predestined  for  the 
pervasive  thinking  which  he  did  and  the 
far-reaching  influence  which  he  exercised. 
Born  in  Newport  in  1780,  a  few  days 
before  Lafayette  arrived  there  with  the 
good  news  of  French  aid  to  the  Americans, 
William  Ellery  Channing  was  fortunate 
to  have  a  father  whose  manliness  in 
mind  and  morals  was  saved  from  hard- 
ness by  a  love  and  liberality  uncommon 
in  that  day  of  Puritanic  mien  and 
mood;  happy  to  have  a  mother  whose 
conscientiousness  and  straightforward- 
ness, though  not  always  tempered  by 
the  tact  the  father  always  showed,  never 
stiffened  into  cold  austerity. 

In  the  boy  the  best  in  both  the  parents 
blended  in  the  right  proportions.  There 
were  in  his  character  from  the  first 
strength  and  sweetness  too.  The  in- 
tegrity and  moral  purity  which  through 
a  lifetime  won  him  the  respect  of  every 
chance  acquaintance  early  made  his 
schoolmates    deferential    to    him,    even 


62  Heavenly  Heretics 

though  his  teachers  were  inclined  to 
make  a  model  of  him  for  the  rest  to 
pattern  after.  The  wealth  of  sympathy 
which  he  showered  on  the  down-trodden 
slave  in  all  those  ante-bellum  days  of 
storm  and  stress  was  given  in  his  boy- 
hood to'  every  bird  that  fluttered  broken- 
winged  across  his  path. 

There  never  was  a  time  when  he  was 
not  religious  in  the  truest  sense.  He 
was  always  brooding  on  religious  prob- 
lems. At  Harvard  from  1794  to  1798, 
where  the  moral  tone  was  low,  as  he 
himself  not  immodestly  remarks,  "  an 
almost  instinctive  shrinking  from  gross 
vice,  to  which  natural  timidity  and  re- 
ligious principle  contributed  not  a  little, 
proved  effectual  safeguards."  In  Rich- 
mond, Virginia,  "  licentious  and  intem- 
perate" as  he  described  it,  where  he 
spent  most  of  the  next  two  years  as 
tutor  in  a  private  family,  he  gave  his 
leisure  hours  to  a  study  of  the  Bible 
and  the  evidences  of  Christianity. 

He  called  that  period  "the  most  event- 
ful "  of  his  life.     He  said : 


William  Ellery  Channing       63 

I  lived  alone,  too  poor  to  buy  books,  spending 
my  days  and  nights  in  an  outbuilding,  with  no 
one  beneath  my  roof  except  during  the  hours 
of  school-keeping.  There  I  toiled  as  I  have 
never  done  since,  for  gradually  my  body  sank 
under  the  unremitting  exertion.  With  not  a 
human  being  to  whom  I  could  communicate  my 
deepest  thoughts  and  feelings,  and  shrinking 
from  common  society,  I  passed  through  intellec- 
tual and  moral  conflicts  of  heart  and  mind  so 
absorbing  as  often  to  banish  sleep  and  to  destroy 
almost  wholly  the  power  of  digestion.  I  was 
worn  well  nigh  to  a  skeleton.  Yet  I  look  back 
on  those  days  of  loneliness  and  frequent  gloom 
with  thankfulness.  If  I  ever  struggled  with 
my  whole  soul  for  purity,  truth,  and  goodness, 
it  was  there.  Then,  amidst  sore  trials,  the  great 
question,  I  trust,  was  settled  within  me  whether 
I  would  be  the  victim  of  passion,  the  world,  or 
the  free  child  and  servant  of  God.  ...  In  a 
licentious  and  intemperate  city  one  spirit,  at 
least,  was  preparing  in  silence  and  loneliness  to 
toil  not  wholly  in  vain  for  truth  and  holiness. 


Like  Frederick  W.  Robertson  in  the 
Tyrol,  Channing  in  those  months  at 
Richmond  learned  to  beat  his  music  out 
and  emerged  to  become,  after  a  year  or 
two  of  special  preparation,  pastor  of  the 


64  Heavenly  Heretics 

Federal  Street  Congregational  Church  in 
Boston,  where  he  preached  from  1803 
until  his  death  in  1842. 

Greater  preachers  there  have  been 
than  William  Ellery  Channing.  He 
lacked  the  bulk  most  men  count  neces- 
sary to  the  orator.  "He  was  small  of 
stature,  thin,  with  high  cheek-bones  and 
large  dark  eyes,  having  shadows  about 
them  almost  as  dark  as  the  eyes."  He 
looked  his  physical  inferiority.  He 
seemed  to  have  barely  enough  frame,  as 
Dr.  Bellows  once  remarked,  "to  anchor 
his  body  to  the  earth."  When  he  re- 
marked to  Dr.  Furness  that  he  "  could  n't 
strike  a  man,"  Dr.  Furness  wondered 
if  any  man  would  feel  a  blow  from 
Channing's  puny  fist. 

But  even  if  there  was  no  power  in  his 
small  physique,  there  was  magic  in  his 
voice.  "His  voice, — ah,  that  wonderful 
voice!    wonderful,"    says    Dr.    Furness, 

not  for  the  music  of  its  tones,  but  for  its  ex- 
traordinary power  of  expression.  Whether  from 
the  delicacy  of  the  vocal  organ  or  from  bodily 
weakness,   I   do  not  know,   it  was   flexible  to 


William  Ellery  Channing       65 

tremulousness.  When  he  began  to  discourse, 
it  ran  up  and  down,  even  in  the  articulation  of 
a  single  polysyllabic  word,  in  so  strange  a 
fashion  that  they  who  heard  him  for  the  first 
time  could  not  anticipate  its  effect, — how, 
before  it  ceased,  that  voice  would  thrill  them  to 
the  inmost.  I  cannot  liken  it  to  anything  but 
a  huge  sail,  napping  about  at  first  at  random, 
but  soon  taking  the  wind,  swelling  out  most 
majestically,  as  Sydney  Smith  said  of  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  that, "  when  the  spirit  came  upon  him 
he  spread  his  enormous  canvas,  and  launched 
into  a  wide  sea  of  eloquence." 

To  those  who  could  not  then  foresee 
a  Phillips  Brooks  with  manuscript  before 
him  moving  multitudes  as  though  he 
spoke  without  a  note,  the  sight  of  Chan- 
ning "  shooting  with  a  rest"  his  balanced 
sentences  and  rounded  periods  forth  may 
have  at  first  appeared  a  trifle  disappoint- 
ing. Yet  no  less  discriminating  a  listener 
than  John  Gorham  Palfrey  tells  us  that 
Channing's  pulpit  utterances  approached 
near  "to  what  we  imagine  of  a  prophet's 
or  an  angel's  inspiration.  "  And  when  to 
the  lucidity  and  richness  of  his  literary 

style,   the  purity   and  elevation  of  his 
5 


66  Heavenly  Heretics 

thought,  the  sincerity  and  intensity  of 
his  conviction,  there  was  added  a  glow 
of  chastened  eloquence  which  now  and 
then  swept  away  the  barriers  of  re- 
straint, no  wonder  that  rapt  listeners  re- 
ported as  of  a  sermon  preached  in  New 
York  in  1826,  "the  man  was  full  of 
fire,  and  his  body  seemed,  under  some 
of  his  tremendous  sentences,  to  expand 
into  that  of  a  giant. " 

But  his  preaching  always  cost  him 
dear.  "  The  sermon  over,  there  was  little 
left  in  the  preacher  of  that  nervous  elas- 
ticity with  which  he  had  hurried  up  the 
pulpit  stairs.  The  virtue  had  gone  out  of 
him."  The  penalty  was  now  to  pay  of 
sleepless  hours  and  cerebral  exhaustion. 
Here,  too,  as  in  the  case  of  Shelley,  was 

"a  power 
Girt  round  with  weakness,   that  could   scarce 

uplift 
The  weight  of  the  superincumbent  hour." 

What  was  the  sermon  about?  Go 
back  with  me  to  the  age  in  which  the 
great  man  lived.     Calvinism  then  looked 


William  Ellery  Channing       67 

its  gloomiest  and  most  forbidding.  Tri- 
theism  was  masquerading  in  the  garb 
of  Trinitarianism.  Justification  by  faith 
had  become  justification  by  logic.  Bibli- 
cal interpretation  was  nothing  more  than 
unquestioning  literalism.  The  Christ  had 
'turned  into  a  mere  lay  figure  on  which 
to  hang  the  outworn  clothes  of  a  belated 
theory  of  the  Atonement.  Human 
thought  could  scarcely  get  its  breath. 
When  men  came  to  church  they  had  to 
leave  their  generosity  at  home.  Here 
and  there  a  voice  was  crying  in  the  wilder- 
ness; but  not  a  voice  articulate;  and  no 
one  listened  long.  The  stored-up  indig- 
nation of  the  human  heart  at  the  most 
unchristian  view  of  Christianity  man  can 
ever  take  was  still  unvoiced  when  Chan- 
ning came  and  spoke  the  protest  of  the 
finest  feeling  and  the  sanest  thinking 
against  intolerance  in  thought  and  word. 
He  went  the  whole  length  of  denial 
and  repudiation.  He  challenged  Cal- 
vinism to  its  face.  He  tore  the  mask 
from  Tritheism.  For  justification  by 
argument,  he  substituted  a  living  faith 


68  Heavenly  Heretics 

in  a  loving  God.  In  the  place  of  the 
constrictions  of  a  severe  literalism  he 
placed  the  modern  spirit  which  regards 
the  Bible  as  a  book,  though  best  of 
books,  and  brings  to  its  interpretation 
a  consecrated  common  sense.  For  the 
metaphysical  Christ  of  mediaeval  specu- 
lation he  offered  man  a  Christ  more 
human  and  scarcely  less  divine,  a  Christ 
born  of  a  Virgin,  a  worker  of  the  mira- 
cles the  Four  Gospels  narrate,  a  vic- 
tor over  death  by  rising  from  the  dead, 
one  who  spoke  as  never  man  spake,  in 
a  special  sense  the  Son  of  God  pre-exist- 
ent,  though  not  perhaps  eternally  pre- 
existent. 

These  are  Channing's  very  words:  "I 
believe  Him  to  be  more  than  a  human 
being;  separated  by  a  broad  distinction 
from  other  men. ' '    Again,  Channing  says : 

Jesus  was  what  he  claimed  to  be,  and  what  his 
followers  attested.  Nor  is  this  all.  Jesus  not 
only  was,  he  is  still  the  Son  of  God,  the  Saviour 
of  the  World.  He  exists  now;  he  has  entered 
that  heaven  to  which  he  always  looked  forward 
on  earth.     With  a  clear,  calm  faith,  I  see  him 


William  Ellery  Channing       69 

in  that  state  of  glory;  and  I  confidently  expect 
at  no  distant  period,  to  see  him  face  to  face. 

Is  it  any  wonder  with  these  and  similar 
expressions  in  mind,  that  Dr.  Chadwick 
in  his  excellent  biography,  admits  that 
"  Channing,  if  not  a  Christian  theist, 
approximated  that  standing"? 

Christ  and  Him  crucified  Channing  was 
always  preaching ;  never,  however,  in  tra- 
ditional terms.  If  he  was  not  technically 
a  Unitarian  as  oftenest  perhaps  the  term 
is  used  to-day,  he  was  as  surely  not  a 
thorough  going  Trinitarian.  He  had  little 
patience  with  efforts  to  draw  a  sharp 
distinction  between  Unitarians  and  Trini- 
tarians. Once  he  said:  "It  is  from  deep 
conviction  that  I  have  stated  once  and 
again  that  the  differences  between  Uni- 
tarians and  Trinitarians  lie  more  in 
sounds  than  in  ideas. "  If  the  cross  did 
not  signify  to  him  what  it  signified  to 
orthodoxy,  it  still  signified.  These  are 
words  of  his: 

I  cannot  receive  from  the  Cross  of  Christ  any 
good  so   great  as  that    sublime  spirit  of   self- 


70  Heavenly  Heretics 

sacrifice,  of  love  to  God,  and  of  unbounded 
charity,  which  the  Cross  so  gloriously  mani- 
fested. 

Back  of  all  his  views  of  God  and  Christ, 
ever  stood  his  love  of  man.  When  Henry 
George,  in  a  private  conversation,  once 
said  to  me  that  he  loved  Jesus  because 
Jesus  loved  man  he  pointed  out  the  way 
Channing  always  took  to  Jesus  and  to 
Jesus'  God.  It  was  the  human  Jesus 
loving  human  beings  that  attracted 
Channing,  and  he  was  ready  to  believe 
any  word  that  Jesus  spoke  because  every 
word  of  Jesus  appeared  to  be  prompted 
by  a  love  that  passeth  knowledge.  It 
seemed  to  Channing  that  one  who  proved, 
as  Jesus  did,  his  love  of  man  by  dying 
for  him  and  then  rising  from  the  dead 
had  a  right  to  be  believed  whatever  he 
might  say  about  himself,  whatever  claims 
he  presumed  to  make  about  his  person 
and  authority. 

The  supreme  value  of  a  man, — that 
was  Channing's  fundamental  formula. 
That  was,  in  his  judgment,  the  raison 
d'etre  of  the  Christian  religion.     But  for 


William  Ellery  Channing       71 

that    there   would    be    no    occasion    for 
religion  at  all. 

I  believe,  he  said,  that  Christianity  has  one 
great  principle  which  is  central,  around  which 
all  its  truths  gather,  and  which  constitutes  it 
the  Glorious  Gospel  of  the  Blessed  God:  it  is 
the  doctrine  that  God  purposes,  in  his  unbounded 
Fatherly  Love,  to  perfect  the  human  soul:  to 
purify  it  from  all  sin ;  to  fill  it  with  his  own  spirit ; 
to  unfold  it  forever. 

A  perfect  God  of  perfect  love  and  man 
needing  love  and  struggling  toward  per- 
fection,— these  were  the  two  poles  be- 
tween which  Channing's  mind  was  ever 
moving.  And  so  it  is  we  owe  to  Chan- 
ning, even  in  this  day,  something  of  that 
larger  view  of  God  the  Father  in  which, 
when  understood,  there  is  no  room  save 
for  love  yearning  to  express  itself  medi- 
ately through  the  Incarnation  and  im- 
mediately through  conscience,  and  for 
a  clearer  comprehension  of  the  possi- 
bility and  dignity  of  man  in  contradic- 
tion of  all  theory  about  man's  inherent 
corruption. 

Opposed  at  first  to  the  organisation  of 


72  Heavenly  Heretics 

the  Unitarian  Association,  reluctant  to 
adopt  the  name  of  Unitarian  at  all, 
Channing  was  in  his  last  years,  however, 
swept  into  the  Unitarian  movement  and 
by  and  by  virtually  accepted  the  leader- 
ship of  it.  The  Unitarianism  of  his 
day  was  his  own  Unitarianism — or  "  Lib- 
eral Christianity"  as  he  preferred  to  call 
it.  Though  not  a  well  rounded  faith,  it 
was  always  noble,  stressing  as  it  did 
the  moral  perfectness  of  God,  God's 
purpose  to  uplift  the  world  through 
Jesus  Christ,  the  value  of  human  life 
as  such,  and  the  simplicity  and  natural- 
ness of  religion.  Many  of  New  England's 
truest  sons  and  purest  daughters  have 
been  nourished  on  the  faith  of  Channing 
to  the  edifying  of  their  kind  and  the 
strong  upbuilding  of  the  nation's  charac- 
ter. And  the  liberal  movement  every- 
where discernible  to-day  is  bringing  many 
Christians  nearer  to  some  of  the  intel- 
lectual concepts  Channing  held  about 
God  and  Christ,  man  and  immortality, 
the  Bible  and  its  doctrines. 

But  it  ought  in  fairness  to  be  admitted 


William  Ellery  Channing       73 

that  not  Channing's  influence  alone  is 
responsible  for  this.  Many  circumstances 
have  contributed  to  the  growing  liberality 
of  Christian  thinkers  in  our  day,  and  else- 
where Channing's  influence  has  not  been 
as  significant  as  it  has  been  in  New  Eng- 
land. Liberality  is  now  the  very  air  we 
breathe  as  was  liberty  a  while  ago. 

Again,  it  is  noteworthy  that  Channing's 
attitude  toward  Christ  was  not  the  same 
as  that  of  some  who  represent  Channing's 
faith  to-day.  He  wanted  to  believe  the 
most  he  could  concerning  Jesus.  He  was 
never  indifferent  to  the  Person  of  Christ, 
however  earnestly  he  emphasised  his 
words  and  works.  Indeed  to  induce  men 
to  become  "one  with  Jesus  in  thought, 
in  feeling,  in  power,  in  holiness  "  was  the 
supreme  purpose  of  his  preaching. 

Perhaps  the  best  of  Channing  after 
all  was  not  what  he  held  and  preached, 
but  how  he  held  and  preached  it.  That 
is  frequently  the  best  in  any  man.  The 
universe  is  full  of  truth,  but  no  man 
gets  even  the  smallest  measure  of  it  ex- 
cept he  seek  it  along  the  highway  of 


74  Heavenly  Heretics 

absolute  reality.  To  hold  what  we  hold 
in  all  sincerity  is  better  than  to  hold  more 
with  indifference.  To  hold  the  truth 
we  hold,  whether  it  be  much  or  little, 
in  heart  as  well  as  head,  is  indeed  to  hold 
it.  Nothing  entered  Channing's  spacious 
intellect  that  was  not  brought  up  promptly 
to  the  bar  of  a  warm  heart,  and  by  the 
test  at  the  soul's  centre  rejected  or  ap- 
proved. As  in  the  early  autumn  of 
1842  he  lay  on  his  death-bed  in  the  Wal- 
loomsac  Inn  in  Bennington,  he  whis- 
pered to  the  anxious  relatives  and  friends 
who  gathered  round  him,  "We  need  to 
feel  the  reality,  the  reality  of  the  spiritual 
life." 

"They  turned  him  in  his  bed,"  says 
Dr.  Chadwick,  "  that  he  might  look  upon 
the  eastern  hills,  on  which,  and  on  the 
sky  above  them,  the  reflected  sunset 
light  was  warm  and  beautiful.  Through 
the  parted  curtains  and  a  clambering 
vine,  it  stole  in  upon  his  face.  None 
knew  just  when  he  passed  but  he  died 
looking  eastward,  as  if  expectant  of 
another  dawn. " 


William  Ellery  Channing       75 

His  last  audible  words  were:  "I  have 
received  many  messages  from  the  spirit. " 
And  every  thoughtful  man  who  has 
made  himself  acquainted  with  the  char- 
acter and  achievements  of  "the  little 
minister,"  as  he  was  sometimes  called, 
will  be  grateful  to  his  God  and  Channing's 
God  that  the  Holy  Spirit  chose  to  give 
to  this  great  land  of  ours  many  messages 
through  a  medium  so  worthy  to  transmit 
them. 


And  thus  the  common  tongue  and  pen, 
Which  world-wide  echo  Channing's  fame 

As  one  of  Heaven's  anointed  men, 
Have  sanctified  his  name." 


Much  has  been  written,  wise  and  otherwise, 
concerning  Channing.  Chadwick's  biography, 
latest  to  appear,  will  probably  remain  the  best 
until  the  last.  The  Complete  Works  of  Chan- 
ning, published  by  the  American  Unitarian 
Association,  is  the  Channing  student's  compre- 
hensive source  book.  Miss  Peabody's  Rem- 
iniscences of  Channing  can  never  lose  the 
charm  the  author  and  the  subject  join  in  giving 
it.  And  the  chapter  on  Channing  in  Addison's 
The  Clergy  in  American  Life  and  Letters  and  in 
Pioneers  of  Religious  Liberty  in  America,  being 
the  Great  and  Thursday  Lectures  delivered  in 
Boston,  1903,  are  as  informing  as  they  are 
interesting. 


Horace  Bushnell 
1802-1876 


77 


"The  preacher's  preacher." — George  Adam  Smith. 

"It  was  a  live  coal  that  he  placed  upon  the  altar. " — 
Bishop  Clark. 

"His  own  ideal  of  his  life's  work  was  that  of  dis- 
covery."— Austin  Phelps. 

"I  just  look  at  truth  from  another  corner  of  the 
room." — Horace  Bushnell. 

"He  had  no  theology  that  he  could  not  preach." — 
Lewis  O.  Brastow. 

"The  gospel  is  nothing  now  any  more  than  it  was  at 
the  first  unless  it  is  reincarnated,  and  kept  incarnate." 
— Horace  Bushnell. 

"If  the  dogmas  against  which  he  began  his  warfare  in 
1848  had  been  modified  a  generation  sooner,  the 
division  of  the  Congregational  body  would  never  have 
taken  place.  " — Washington  Gladden. 

"It  is  really  good  and  blessed,  as  I  can  testify,  to 
be  under  any  pressure  that  presses  toward  God. " — 
Horace  Bushnell. 

"He  fought  his  doubts  and  gather'd  strength." — 
Tennyson. 


78 


HORACE  BUSHNELL 

\  AWHILE  in  Boston  Channing  was 
*  *  with  fearless  hand  uncovering  for 
human  souls  the  love  of  God  hid  overlong 
beneath  His  sovereignty,  west  and  south 
within  the  borders  of  New  England 
men  feared  more  than  they  loved  their 
Maker,  and  "Edwardeanism"  still  ruled 
religious  thinking  with  a  rod  of  iron. 
Edwards's  son,  who  bore  the  name  his 
father  made  immortal,  and  other  satellites 
revolving  at  one  decade  or  another  in  the 
Edwards  orbit  through  more  than  three- 
quarters  of  a  century,  differed  among 
themselves  about  details  but  not  about 
the  central  principle  of  their  theology, 
not  about  the  need  of  offering  continuous 
and  stout  resistance  to  the  Arminianism 
which  had  been  the  lifelong  bane  of  their 
renowned  protagonist. 

And  yet   in  spite  of  them,   Bellamy 
and  Hopkins,  Edwards  junior  and  Em- 

79 


So  Heavenly  Heretics 

mons,  President  Dwight  and  Dr.  Taylor, 
last  of  the  line  and  second  in  ability  to 
none  but  Edwards  senior,  though  always 
tethered  at  the  stake  which  Edwards 
drove  down  deep  and  firm,  each  in  suc- 
cession in  the  instinctive  search  for 
richer  pasturage  than  Edwards  had  en- 
joyed, grazed  farther  afield  than  he,  seeing 
something  worth  their  while  even  in  cer- 
tain aspects  of  Arminianism,  foreseeing 
even  with  unwilling  eyes  that  which  in 
colonial  days  no  one  could  foresee,  that 
American  democracy  triumphant  through 
the  daring  exercise  of  freedom  of  the 
will  in  politics  and  government  was  not 
long  to  be  denied  some  freedom  in  theo- 
logy. One  or  other  of  them  openly  or 
secretly  was  pruning  orthodoxy  of  its 
medievalism,  eliminating  the  theories 
which  imputed  unrighteousness  to  God, 
clearing  away  the  rank  absurdity  of  the 
doctrine  that  Adamic  guilt  was  trans- 
mitted with  Adamic  sin,  working  steadily, 
year  in,  year  out,  at  the  trying  task  of 
reconciling  human  dependence  with 
personal  responsibility. 


HORACE    BUSHNELL 
From  the  engraving  by  S.  A.  Schoff  after  the  drawing  by  S.  W.  Rowse 


Horace  Bushnell  81 

But  with  a  clear  field  for  the  dis- 
covery of  new  truth,  or  rather  for  the 
rediscovery  of  old  truth  lost  to  sight 
with  the  separation  from  the  Mother 
Church  in  the  Elizabethan  period,  the 
"Edwardeans"  were  not  making  all  the 
headway  which  they  should  and  could 
have  made.  They  were  too  loyal  for 
the  truth's  good,  to  the  memory  of  Ed- 
wards. Like  him,  they  set  too  high  a 
valuation  on  metaphysics.  They  thought 
too  much  of  dialectics  as  an  agency  in 
seeking  truth,  and  they  used  it  even  when 
they  were  most  conscientious  as  "a 
dodge" — to  quote  Professor  Jowett — 
rather  than  a  science  or  an  art.  Whether 
of  the  " ultra- Edwardeans"  or  of  the 
more  moderate  "New  Haven  School' * 
which  Dr.  Taylor  started  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  "Edwardeans" 
multiplied  so  many  inconsequential  dif- 
ferences and  filled  up  their  minds  with  so 
many  nice  distinctions  without  difference 
that  their  thinking  one  day  reached  the 
unhappy  plight  humorously  and  vera- 
ciously  described  by  Horace  Bushnell  as 


82  Heavenly  Heretics 

"  the  sedimentary  subsidence  of  theology 
itself,  precipitated  in  the  confused  mix- 
ture of  its  elements." 

It  was  into  such  an  atmosphere  that 
Bushnell  was  born  and  in  such  an  at- 
mosphere that  he  learned  to  think.  Like 
Channing,  Bushnell  was  quick  to  have 
done  with  ' '  Edwardeanism . ' '  Like  Chan- 
ning, he  was  glad  to  voice  the  growing 
sense  of  freedom  both  in  religion  and  in 
politics.  Like  Channing,  he  became  with 
passing  years  the  publicist  as  well  as 
preacher,  the  patriot  as  well  as  parson, 
ever  emphasising  the  coextensiveness  of 
life  and  religion.  His  sermons,  like  Chan- 
ning's,  were  too  substantial  and  compact 
to  make  the  man  who  preached  them 
popular  with  the  unthinking.  Like 
Channing's,  they  were  regarded  as  ob- 
scure by  those  who  could  not  or  who 
would  not  listen  closely.  And  Bushnell 
like  Channing  never  dared  till  late  in  life 
to  speak  without  a  manuscript,  ever  con- 
fident that  what  the  preacher  loses  in 
directness  he  makes  up  in  the  solidity 
which  the  manuscript  assures. 


Horace  Bushnell  83 

Whatever  men  might  think  of  Bush- 
nell in  the  pulpit,  they  never  thought 
him  commonplace.  Anywhere,  every- 
where, he  was  original  and  impressive. 
Young  or  old,  his  was  a  spare  and 
sinewy  figure.  The  face,  beardless  as 
in  early  manhood,  bearded  as  in  later 
years,  was  always  delicate  in  outline, 
sensitive  in  the  play  and  interplay  of 
the  emotions  which  it  pictured.  The 
mobile  mouth  seemed  ever  uncertain 
whether  it  would  break  into  a  smile 
or  into  raillery,  never  bitter  or  sar- 
donic. The  broad  and  spacious  fore- 
head was  always  threatened  by  a  tan- 
gled mass  of  turbulent  and  shaggy  hair. 
The  grey  eyes,  habitually  kindly,  could 
flame  with  righteous  wrath  when  there 
was  hypocrisy  in  sight.  Though  the 
voice  was  never  strong  or  rich  and  in 
his  later  years  had  small  compass,  it 
never  wanted  carrying  power  and  was 
not  unsuited  to  his  jury  style  of  simple 
and  downright  persuasiveness  in  public 
speech.  In  all  his  preaching  there  was 
an  abruptness  not  unloving,  a  fiery  ur- 


84  Heavenly  Heretics 

gency  not  intolerant,  an  a  nervous 
impetuosity  invariably  accompanied  by 
a  "peculiar  emphasising  swing  of  his 
right  arm  from  the  shoulder, "  as  though 
to  swing  himself  without  delay  into  the 
heart  of  theme  and  listener. 

Many  pictures  of  the  preacher  as  he 
appeared  to  those  who  knew  him  best 
have  been  drawn  for  the  enlightenment 
of  those  who  never  saw  him.  This  by 
President  D.  N.  Beach,  a  student  at  Yale 
when  Bushnell  preached  there  at  the 
age  of  seventy,  makes  the  strong  man's 
pulpit  presence  perspicuous,  his  pulpit 
power  explicable. 

Gaunt  was  he,  grey,  ashen  of  skin,  thin- 
voiced  till  he  got  under  way,  stopping  time 
and  again  to  cough,  no  elocution,  nor  rhetoric 
(albeit  scarce  ever  such  rhetoric,  soberly  con- 
ceived) :  making  us  his  by  no  ad  captandum 
themes  or  illustrations,  or  metaphors;  the 
plainest,  most  matter  of  fact  person  that  ever 
stood  there.  This  invocation,  which  we  could 
scarcely  hear,  would  still  us.  The  Scripture 
lesson,  plain  speech  (as  if  uttered  on  yesterday's 
half  holiday)  about  some  valiant  soul,  read  as 
only  one  reads  who  dwells  forever  with  realities, 


Horace  Bushnell  85 

would  change  our  temper  for  the  entire  day. 
Then  the  prayer. 

I  can  hear  it  yet.  Nothing  about  Bushnell 
so  holds  me,  though  I  cannot  recall  a  sentence 
of  it.  You  dreamed,  like  Jacob  at  Bethel,  that 
God  was  there.  All  conventions,  too,  were 
dissolved  betwixt  Him  and  you.  Our  seer  must 
have  held  Him  with  his  glittering  eye.  Then  the 
great  argument  began,— a  shorter  ''pastoral" 
prayer  than  we  had  ever  heard,  that  spake  to  the 
Infinite  as  a  man  to  his  friend;  reverent  but 
familiar;  grateful  but  self-respecting;  diction  the 
simplest,  the  weightiest;  hesitating  not  to  as- 
sume for  us  responsibilities,  nor  to  lay  answering 
responsibilities  on  God;  .  .  .  and  done,  as  all 
straight,  pregnant  speech  is  done,  soon,  simply, 
confidently.  The  world  has  changed  when  you  lift 
your  head.  To  have  heard  Bushnell  pray,  and 
to  have  prayed  even  a  very  little  with  him,  was 
already  to  have  entered  the  world  of  spirit.  Our 
Saviour's  unique  prayer  life  was  explicable. 

The  sermon  I  remember  best,  better  than  all 
except  that  "On  the  Mount,"  was  the  one  en- 
titled "The  Dissolving  of  Doubts."  "Doubtsare 
not  peculiar  to  Nebuchadnezzar,"  he  begins, 
putting  into  that  monarch's  lips  words  belonging 
to  Belshazzar  (and  it  so  stands  in  the  printed 
volume) ;  but  if  you  notice  this,  you  do  not  mind, 
any  more  than  you  mind  Shakespeare's  anach- 
ronisms.  No,  they  are  not  peculiar  to  Nebuchad- 


86  Heavenly  Heretics 

nezzar;  you  even  have  had  yours.  Thereupon 
in  the  space  of  some  three  coarsely  printed 
pages,  say  in  five  minutes,  he  has  given  you 
what  an  earlier  metaphysician  would  have  called 
the  "natural  history"  of  your  own  mind.  Then, 
while  you  sit  breathless,  he  describes  whither 
you  are  come.  "His  suns  do  not  rise,  but  climb." 
Next  he  proposes  a  way  out.  It  appears  to 
you  the  more  alluring  because  he  shyly  implies 
that  he  has  tried  it  himself.  ...  "  O  God,  if 
there  be  a  God,"  he  quotes,  and  you  take  heart. 
"A  dismal  sort  of  prayer,"  he  comments, 
while  you  whisper  Amens,  "but  the  best  he  can 
make,  and  better  than  some."  The  tears  by 
this  time  are  streaming  down  your  face,  but 
you  sit  bolt  upright  on  those  timber  benches,  not 
fearing,  at  least  for  now,  the  face  of  man.  But 
it  is  his  application  that  lifts  you.  "  Never  be 
afraid  to  doubt."  "Never  try  to  conquer  doubts 
against  time."  "Never  force  yourself  to  believe." 
"If  you  try  this  way,  you  must  be  anything  that 
it  requires,  a  Jew,  a  Mohammedan,  ready  to  go 
to  the  world's  end,  anything;  most  probably 
you  must  be  a  Christian."  All  this  with  a  calm, 
a  stillness,  a  solemnity  of  emphasis,  a  cheerful 
confidence  in  you  and  in  God,  that  by  this  time 
have  bathed  that  sombre  place  as  in  a  soft  and 
warm  and  heavenly  light.  The  president,  who 
sits  beside  him  in  the  high  pulpit,  and  who  will 
rather  have  chosen  the  theme  "  Sin  not  Self — 


Horace  Bushnell  87 

Reformatory,"  lifts  his  glasses  to  clear  the  mists 
that  are  even  in  his  piercing  eyes,  and  you  walk 
out  into  a  new,  an  unf earing,  a  believing  life. 

Professor  George  Adam  Smith  once 
in  private  conversation  said  that  Bush- 
nell is  the  preacher's  preacher,  as  Spenser 
is  the  poet's  poet,  and  that  his  sermons 
are  on  the  shelves  of  every  manse  in 
Scotland.  The  distinctiveness  in  Bush- 
nell's  preaching  lay  in  its  immediate  com- 
petency to  satisfy  the  most  exacting 
taste.  He  was  the  preacher  for  the 
thoughtful  and  refined. 

His  effectiveness  [says  Dr.  Munger],  was 
peculiar.  If  he  gained  any  hearing  at  all, 
he  won  the  consent  of  the  whole  man,— not 
agreement  always,  but  intellectual  and  moral 
sympathy.  The  sermon  never  lost  its  power  to 
move  and  inspire  such  hearers  through  lapse  of 
years.  He  lodged  so  vast  an  amount  of  truth 
in  heart  and  mind  and  conscience  that  it  could 
not  be  forgotten.  ...  He  was  the  most  demo- 
cratic and  most  human  of  preachers,  and  at  the 
same  time  one  of  the  loftiest  and  most  spiritual. 
He  spoke  to  men  as  on  equal  terms  and  in  a 
direct  way,  taking  them  into  his  confidence  and 
putting  himself  in  their  place,  feeling  their  needs, 


88  Heavenly  Heretics 

sharing  their  doubts,  and  reasoning  the  question 
out  as  one  of  them.  He  never  berates,  and  if  he 
exhorts,  it  is  in  the  same  spirit  of  comradeship 
over  the  matter  in  hand.  Still,  he  is  dominated 
by  his  subject  and  its  demands,  following  where 
it  goes,  and  if  any  of  his  hearers  falter,  he  does 
not  stop  with  them,  but  leads  the  rest  on  to  the 
final  solution,  or  up  to  the  last  look  into  the 
mystery. 

Make  a  careful  study  of  almost  any 
sermon  which  he  preached  and  the 
secret  of  its  charm  will  be  disclosed. 
There  was  usually  a  felicitous  relation- 
ship between  the  title  and  the  text.  In 
the  coining  of  the  one  he  was  as  care- 
ful as  in  the  choosing  of  the  other. 
The  sermon's  central  thought  was  sure 
to  be  embodied  in  the  title,  and  then  the 
text  threw  such  a  bright  light  on  the 
thought  that  the  entire  sermon  seemed 
to  stand  out  plainly  and.  to  betray  its 
import  at  the  start.  What  could  be 
more  allusive  than  a  title  and  a  text 
like  this:  " Every  Man's  Life  a  Plan  of 
God,"  "I  girded  thee,  though  thou  hast 
not  known  me? "     Or  this :  "  Unconscious 


Horace  Bushnell  89 

Influence,"     "Then  went   in   also   that 
other  disciple?" 

Some  preachers  never  know  what  they 
will  write  when  they  take  up  the  pen. 
In  Bushnell's  rapt  imagination  every 
sermon  seems  to  have  been  visualised 
before  he  put  his  pen  to  paper.  It  was 
apparently  never  his  lot  to  have  to  grope 
vacuously  for  an  idea.  His  mind  was 
free  at  every  stage  of  sermon  preparation 
to  give  his  thoughts  their  right  pro- 
portions and  their  proper  dress.  His 
sermons  all  bear  evidence  of  artistic  care 
in  their  construction.  There  is  never  any 
patchwork;  never  any  fortuitous  con- 
course of  materials;  never  any  rhetoric 
for  the  sake  of  rhetoric ;  never  a  metaphor 
or  simile  hung  on  the  outside  but  always 
fused  into  the  body  of  the  sermon. 
Thought  and  sentiment,  the  ordinary 
and  original,  fact  and  fancy — every 
sermon  had  all  these  in  it.  But  it  was 
not  these  that  made  his  sermons  instantly 
effective.  It  was  the  preacher's  vision, 
his  insight  into  the  heart  of  truth,  into 
the  nature  of  things,  at  a  time  when  most 


90  Heavenly  Heretics 

New  England  preachers  were  not  wont  to 
look  life  in  the  face  and  see  things  as 
they  are.  Seek  where  you  will  the  ex- 
planation of  the  power  of  the  man,  you 
will,  I  think,  come  home  again  to  find 
it  in  his  ever  vivid  sense  of  what  is  real 
and  lasting.  There  never  has  been  a 
preacher  in  the  entire  history  of  American 
preaching  more  resolute  to  live  up  to 
the  lines  of  Clough : 

"I  will  look  straight  out— 
See  things — not  try  to  evade  them. 
Fact  shall  be  fact  for  me,  and  the  truth  the  truth 
forever." 

Horace  Bushnell  was  born  in  1802  in 
the  village  of  Bantam,  a  mile  or  two 
from  Litchfield.  He  was  brought  up, 
says  his  younger  brother, 

in  a  household  where  religion  was  no  occasional 
and  nominal  thing,  no  irksome  restraint  nor 
unwelcome  visitor,  but  a  constant  atmosphere, 
a  commanding  but  genial  presence.  In  our 
father  it  was  characterised  by  eminent  evenness, 
fairness,  and  conscientiousness;  in  our  mother  it 
was  felt  as  an  intense  life  of  love,  utterly  un- 
selfish and  untiring  in  its  devotion,  yet  thought- 


Horace  Bushnell  91 

ful,  sagacious,  and  wise,  always  stimulating  and 
ennobling,  and  in  special  crises  leaping  out  in 
tender  and  almost  awful  fire.  If  ever  there 
was  a  child  of  Christian  nurture,  he  was  one ;  .  .  . 
nurtured  in  the  facts  and  principles  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  in  their  bearing  upon  the  life  and 
character;  and  if  ever  a  man  was  true  to  the 
fundamental  principles  and  the  customs  which 
prevailed  in  his  early  home,  even  to  his  latest 
years,  he  was. 

Sent  to  the  local  school  like  other  boys, 
he  was  always  good-natured,  thoughtful, 
self-contained,  mature  beyond  his  years, 
conscious  of  the  latent  power  within  him 
and  yet  without  conceit.  A  full-grown 
man,  handsome  and  agile,  he  entered 
Yale  at  twenty-one,  led  his  class  both  in 
work  and  play,  and  in  spite  of  his  blunt  - 
ness  and  a  provoking  exemplariness, 
which  sometimes  makes  a  man  unpopular 
among  his  college  mates,  he  was  through 
his  four  years  extremely  popular.  Grad- 
uated in  1827  at  the  age  of  twenty-five 
he  taught  a  school  in  Norwich  for  a 
while,  and  then  served  ten  months  on  the 
editorial  staff  of  the  New  York  Journal 
of  Commerce.     Next  he  studied  law  for 


92  Heavenly  Heretics 

a  half  year  in  the  law  school  at  New 
Haven,  and  at  last  in  the  autumn  of 
1829  he  entered  on  a  tutorship  at  Yale, 
where  for  a  year  and  a  half  he  kept  up 
his  law  studies. 

Joseph  Cook  once  said  that  Bushnell 
was  at  college  an  infidel  of  the  Tom 
Paine  type.  It  were  more  accurate  to 
say  that  in  his  twenties  Bushnell  made 
no  profession  of  religion  and  long  be- 
lieved that  at  college  his  "  religious  life 
was  utterly  gone  down."  But  he  makes 
haste  to  add:  "I  had  run  to  no  dissipa- 
tion ;  I  had  been  a  churchgoing,  thought- 
ful man.  "  His  difficulty  was  more  with 
the  theology  than  with  the  religion 
of  the  time.  He  was  yet  to  find  that  he 
could  break  with  "  Edwardeanism,  "  and 
still  be  religious. 

In  the  winter  of  1831  there  was  a 
revival  in  the  college.  Inclined  im- 
patiently to  pass  revivals  by,  he  had  to 
take  account  of  this.  His  students  were 
becoming  interested.  Some  of  them 
looked  to  him — and  told  him  that  they 
did — for  light  and  leading.     There  arose 


Horace  Bushnell  93 

from  the  very  exigencies  of  a  situation 
unexpected  and  unwelcome,  an  obliga- 
tion to  the  higher  interests  of  his  students 
which  he  was  quick  to  recognise  and 
prompt  to  set  before  his  mental  diffi- 
culties. 

But  the  mind  was  not  yet  ready  to 
follow  the  heart.  He  was  sorely  puz- 
zled.    Says  a  friend  of  his: 

On  one  occasion  he  came  in,  and,  throwing 
himself  with  an  air  of  abandonment  into  a  seat, 
and  thrusting  both  hands  through  his  black, 
bushy  hair,  cried  out  desperately,  yet  half 
laughingly,  "O  men!  what  shall  I  do  with  these 
arrant  doubts  I  have  been  nursing  for  years? 
When  the  preacher  touches  the  Trinity  and  when 
logic  shatters  it  all  to  pieces,  I  am  all  at  the  four 
winds.  But  I  am  glad  I  have  a  heart  as  well 
as  a  head.  My  heart  wants  the  Father;  my 
heart  wants  the  Son;  my  heart  wants  the  Holy 
Ghost — and  one  just  as  much  as  the  other.  My 
heart  says  the  Bible  has  a  Trinity  for 
me,  and  I  mean  to  hold  by  my  heart." 

And  holding  by  his  heart,  he  came 
trudging  up  the  steep  incline  of  duty  till 
at  the  top  a  rush  of  feeling  swept  his 
doubts  away  and  brought  him  the  assur- 


94  Heavenly  Heretics 

ance  that  Christianity  is  not  so  much 
a  doctrinal  assertion,  however  forti- 
fied by  logic,  as  a  life  to  live  in  Jesus 
Christ. 

After  such  a  complete  change  of  heart 
as  this — conversion  they  then  called 
it, — was  it  any  wonder  that  the  next 
summer,  his  law  course  completed,  Bush- 
nell  gave  up  his  college  work  and  began 
to  study  for  the  ministry?  Was  it  any 
wonder  that  in  the  New  Haven  semi- 
nary, fresh  from  his  profoundly  moving 
heart  experience,  he  found  little  interest- 
ing, little  worth  his  while,  in  Dr.  Taylor's 
teaching  with  its  under  emphasis  of 
heart  and  over  emphasis  of  head?  Was 
it  any  wonder  that  he  turned  from  the 
dry  bones  of  theology,  at  their  driest 
then,  to  Coleridge's  Aids  to  Reflection, " 
through  whose  heaven-looking  pages  he 
caught  glimpses  of  "a  whole  other  world 
somewhere  overhead,  a  range  of  realities 
in  higher  tier"?  Was  it  any  wonder 
that  he  made  haste  to  join  "the  goodly 
fellowship  of  the  prophets, "  whose  vision 
and  whose  utterance  ever  bear  witness 


Horace  Bushnell  95 

to  the  truth  of  Schleiermacher  that  "  the 
heart  makes  the  theologian"? 

Bushnell's  actual  ministry  began — 
and  also  ended —  in  the  North  Church  at 
Hartford,  in  which  he  was  ordained  May 
22,  1833.  A  little  later,  September  13, 
1833,  he  was  wedded  to  Mary  Apthorp, 
whose  contribution  to  his  spiritual  de- 
velopment and  his  pulpit  usefulness 
seemed  to  him,  and  others,  beyond 
description.  Of  those  first  years  in 
Hartford  we  know  scarcely  more  than 
this,  that  he  lived  a  quiet  life,  well 
within  his  small  income,  paid  his  bills 
with  promptness,  and  was  ethically 
clean  in  all  his  dealings  with  his  fellow 
citizens. 

Like  Phillips  Brooks  he  ripened  early. 
Some  of  his  first  sermons  read  as  well  as 
any  which  he  ever  preached.  His  "  Every 
Man's  Life  a  Plan  of  God, "  prepared 
and  preached  in  those  initial  years,  was 
placed  awhile  ago  by  the  New  York 
Tribune  among  the  three  greatest  ser- 
mons in  existence,  and  his  "Living  to 
God  in  Small  Things,"  which  bears  the 


96  Heavenly  Heretics 

date  of  the  fifth  year  of  his  ministry,  is 
just  as  satisfying. 

Singularly  happy  in  his  home  life, 
reverent  as  every  normal  father  is  of 
child  life,  Bushnell  put  into  his  book  on 
Christian  Nurture  (1846)  his  first  clear 
protest  against  the  "Edwardean"  view- 
that  God  "leaves  the  little  children  of 
our  homes  to  be  practically  orphans, — 
in  their  spiritual  relations,  destitute 
of  a  heavenly  Father's  care  until  they 
have  grown  old  enough  to  pass  through 
the  ordeal  of  conversion. "  The  book 
in  fact  was  written  simply  to  establish  the 
proposition  now  self-evident  in  other 
folds  besides  the  Episcopalian,  "  that  the 
child  is  to  grow  up  a  Christian,  and  never 
know  himself  as  being  otherwise. "  But 
his  claim  was  not  to  go  unchallenged. 
The  book  invited  and  evoked  the  sharp- 
est criticism,  and  brought  its  author 
under  a  cloud  of  suspicion  and  dispar- 
agement which  never  lifted  till  the  last. 

The  supreme  experience  in  the  great 
man's  life  came  in  1848.  Europe  was 
seething    with    revolution.     Events    al- 


Horace  Bushnell  97 

ways  dramatic,  often  tragic,  were  pass- 
ing sharp  and  clear  across  the  world's 
horizon.  Human  thought  was  keen  to 
decipher  the  meaning  of  affairs.  Bush- 
nell's  mind,  ever  active,  was  intensely 
active  now,  turning  over  the  new  thought 
materials  presented  to  it,  striving  to 
interpret  and  explain  in  terms  of  spirit 
incidents  and  movements  seemingly  polit- 
ical alone,  looking  for  some  special  revela- 
tion of  the  possibilities  before  his  ministry 
in  the  new  and  brilliant  light  of  the  world 
stress  and  the  world  need. 

It  came.  Mrs.  Bushnell  tells  us  when 
and  how. 

On  an  early  morning  [she  says],  in  February  his 
wife  awoke  to  hear  that  the  light  they  had  waited 
for  more  than  they  that  watch  for  the  morning, 
had  risen  indeed.  She  asked,  "What  have  you 
seen?  "  He  replied,  ''The  gospel."  It  came  to 
him  at  last,  after  all  his  thought  and  study, 
not  as  something  reasoned  out,  but  as  an  in- 
spiration,— a  revelation  from  the  mind  of  God 
Himself. 

The  sun  of  faith  which  has  hitherto  been 
mounting  slowly  up  the  eastern  sky,  now 


98  Heavenly  Heretics 

reaches  the  zenith,  and  pours  down  its 
light  full-orbed  upon  the  prophet's  soul. 
No  more  broken  lights ;  no  more  partial 
and  defective  seeings.  Now  in  the  noon- 
tide of  his  life  and  love  and  faith  he 
makes  a  "personal  discovery  of  Christ 
and  of  God  as  represented  in  Him," 
satisfying,  controlling,  and  directing 
through  the  rest  of  life. 

The  next  year  through  the  pages  of 
his  God  in  Christ  he  takes  the  world 
into  his  confidence,  and  shares  his  vision 
with  it.  But  the  world — at  any  rate  the 
world  conventional — sees  something  else 
than  vision  in  the  heart-coined  book. 
In  his  zeal  to  beat  down  the  time-long 
falsehood  of  "  Edwardeanism "  that  in 
order  to  pardon  guilty  man  God  had  to 
lay  the  heavy  hand  of  punishment  upon 
His  guiltless  Son,  Bushnell  appears  to 
have  slipped  into  the  heresy  of  the 
modal  Trinity  with  its  conception  of  the 
Three  Persons  in  the  Trinity  as  having 
but  a  temporary  and  revealing  purpose. 

But  he  only  appears.  There  is  in  the 
book  a  subtle  point  his  critics  failed  to 


Horace  Bushnell  99 

notice.  He  does  say  that  the  Trinity  is 
modal  as  relates  to  man.  He  does  not 
say,  however,  that  the  Trinity  is  in  its 
essence  modal.     These  are  his  very  words : 

I  will  only  say  that  the  Trinity,  or  the  three 
persons,  are  given  to  me  for  the  sake  of  their 
external  expression,  not  for  the  internal  investi- 
gation of  their  contents.  If  I  use  them  ration- 
ally or  wisely,  then  I  shall  use  them  according 
to  their  object.  I  must  not  intrude  upon  their 
interior  nature,  either  by  assertion  or  denial. 

To  take  God's  revelation  of  Himself 
at  its  face  value,  in  its  obvious  import, 
and  to  make  no  assumptions  as  to 
what  God  has  chosen  to  withhold 
from  man, — this  was  Bushnell's  purpose; 
and  the  fault  was  not  wholly  his  if  to 
some  his  book  seemed,  in  its  tendency  at 
least,  Sabellian.  However,  in  his  next 
book,  Christ  in  Theology  (1851),  he 
took  pains  to  restate  the  Trinitarian  case 
and  to  cast  it  more  dexterously  into 
Nicene  form. 

It  was  then  too  late  to  make  amends 
to  New  England  orthodoxy.  Days  of 
accusation   followed   the   appearance   of 


ioo  Heavenly  Heretics 

God  in  Christ.  New  Haven,  Bangor, 
East  Windsor,  even  Princeton  tried  to 
bring  him  up  with  a  round  turn.  The  re- 
ligious journals  had  their  fling  at  him. 
Clergymen  once  cordial  passed  him  by 
with  icy  faces  and  with  formal  greet- 
ings. There  were  years  when  not  one 
preacher  in  all  Hartford  would  exchange 
with  him,  and  when  his  unwished  for  ac- 
cession to  a  company  of  ministers  made 
them  ill  at  ease  and  stilled  the  give  and 
take  of  spontaneous  conversation.  A 
few,  a  very  few, 

"  On  whom  the  Spirit  came," 

drew  closer  to  him  in  his  hour  of  trial, 
and  compensated  all  they  could  by  love 
and  trust  for  the  heart-hurts  he  was  re- 
ceiving at  the  hands  of  others.  The 
Congregational  system,  fortunately,  does 
not  lend  itself  with  readiness  to  trying 
heretics,  but  his  enemies  did  their  ut- 
most to  adapt  it  to  their  will.  When 
his  own  Association  failed  outright  to 
convict  him  they  brought  in  a  dubious 
verdict,  of  which  Bushnell  wrote  a  friend, 


Horace  Bushnell  101 

"  that  though  I  am  a  frightful  being,  I 
am  nevertheless  substantially  orthodox.  " 
The  Fairfield  West  Association  kept  up 
the  fight  against  him  for  several  years  till 
from  sheer  weariness — not  cowardice — 
he  removed  beyond  their  reach  by  making 
his  church  independent  of  all  others,  and 
living  out  his  public  life  apart  from  all 
religious  organisations  save  his  own 
loyal  local   church. 

During  all  those  years  of  nerve  strain 
and  soul  suffering  Bushnell  kept  his  tem- 
per and  maintained  his  poise,  saving  the 
discussion  when  he  could  from  bitterness, 
answering  in  love  whatever  the  provoca- 
tion, ranging  ever  deeper  into  the  truth 
which  underlies  all  efforts  to  express  it  in 
human  speech,  discovering  now  and  then 
that  some  earlier  statement  which  had 
given  offence  was  not  after  all  so  much 
untrue  as  inadequate  in  the  light  of  his 
increasing  knowledge,  realising  as  the 
years  went  by  that  truth  in  the  spirit's 
realm  can  at  most  be  hinted  at  and  the 
language  of  theology  is  in  consequence 
at  best  suggestive. 


102  Heavenly  Heretics 

Perhaps  Dr.  Trumbull  is  correct;  it 
may  have  been  Bushnell's  use  of  language 
rather  than  the  views  he  tried  to  express 
in  language  that  created  the  suspicion 
of  his  heresy.  In  an  age  in  which 
theologians  thought  they  could  do  every- 
thing with  language,  even  to  the  splitting 
of  the  finest  hairs  of  metaphysics,  a  man 
was  sure  to  have  his  troubles  who  dis- 
credited the  theologian's  best-loved  tool 
in  words  like  these,  "  Language  ...  is 
not  so  much  descriptive  as  suggestive, 
being  figurative  throughout,  even  where 
it  deals  with  spiritual  truth.  " 

For  his  other  books,  important  as 
they  are,  a  word  must  serve.  His  Nature 
and  the  Supernatural  (1858)  with  its 
exquisite  chapter  on  the  character  of 
Jesus,  was  perhaps  the  first  American 
book  to  attempt  to  prove  in  some  detail 
that  the  distinction  between  the  natural 
and  supernatural  is  artificial  and  untrue. 
In  The  Vicarious  Sacrifice  (1866)  he  set 
forth  comprehensively  the  moral  view  of 
the  Atonement  widely  held  to-day  that 
the  sufferings  and  death  of  Jesus  fall  under 


Horace  Bushnell  103 

a  law  of  universal  sweep  which  makes 
it  possible  for  every  human  soul  both  to 
enter  into  the  Christ  passion  and  to  in- 
terpret it  to  others.  The  principal  vol- 
umes of  his  sermons  are  Christ  and 
His  Salvation,  Sermons  on  Living  Sub- 
jects, and  Sermons  for  the  New  Life, 
which  won  for  Bushnell  the  reputation 
of  "the  most  independent  and  muscular 
sermoniser  in  the  American  pulpit." 

There  were,  besides,  four  volumes  of 
essays  and  addresses,  some  of  which, 
especially  those  on  Work  and  Play,  are 
as  readable  as  Emerson's.  It  was  in  the 
address  at  Yale  in  1843  that  ne  cut  from 
under  slavery  the  Scripture  basis  some 
Southerners  were  then  insisting  was  irre- 
movable. His  oration  on  "  Our  Obliga- 
tion to  the  Dead"  has  on  it  many  of  the 
marks  of  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  address. 
No  abler  word  perhaps  on  either  side 
the  Woman's  Suffrage  Question  has  been 
written  than  his  Reform  against  Nature. 
But  it  is  in  The  Moral  Uses  of  Dark 
Things  that  we  find  the  man  and  preacher 
at  his  best.  Nowhere  else  do  mind  and  soul 


104  Heavenly  Heretics 

seem  so  superbly  mated.  Nowhere  else 
does  his  genius  coruscate  so  brilliantly. 
Nowhere  else  is  there  such  a  wealth  of 
memorable  phrase  and  clever  epigram, 
in  the  making  of  which  Bushnell  was 
always  past  master. 

He  wrote  as  well  as  spoke  on  many 
themes,  and  if  you  are  of  a  mind  you 
can  find  much  to  criticise  in  what  he 
wrote.  He  sometimes  overstressed  his 
theory  of  language.  His  exegesis  was  not 
seldom  wholly  fanciful,  and  in  the  light 
of  higher  criticism  it  sometimes  seems 
absurd.  He  turned  out  theological  books 
too  easily ;  at  any  rate  too  rapidly.  Some 
had  too  soon  to  be  revised.  He  was  sel- 
dom widely  read  or  deeply  read  on  sub- 
jects he  essayed  to  discuss  in  print.  No 
man  ought  to  write  as  though  he  were  the 
first  to  write  unless  he  is  the  first.  There 
were  several  centuries  of  Christian  apolo- 
getics before  Sabellianism  was  disposed 
of  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  and 
Bushnell  would  have  had  less  inconve- 
nience in  his  lifetime  and  his  reputation 
would  have  won  its  way  less  hardly  had 


Horace  Bushnell  105 

he  found  this  out  first  hand  before  he 
wrote  his  God  in  Christ. 

But  there  are,  at  any  rate,  in  his  books 
no  membra  disjecta.  "He  had,"  his 
daughter  says,  "no  unrelated  facts." 
Sermons,  essays,  addresses,  all  seem  to 
belong  together ;  all  bear  the  stamp  of  the 
same  personality.  In  the  crucible  of  a 
highly  spiritualised  intellect  all  the  truths 
that  came  his  way  were  fused  together 
into  a  perfect  unity  which  makes  Bush- 
nellism  a  precise  and  lasting  fact  in 
the  history  of  theology  this  side  the 
Atlantic. 

The  best  about  the  man  was  that  he 
came  closer  to  living  what  he  preached 
than  most  of  us.  He  had  all  sorts  of 
trials  in  his  stormy  life.  He  was  al- 
most always  "troubled  on  every  side, 
yet  not  distressed;  perplexed  but  not  in 
despair;  persecuted,  but  not  forsaken; 
cast  down,  but  not  destroyed. "  He  had 
to  beat  out  all  the  music  which  he  made. 
Much  of  the  criticism  he  received  was 
at  the  hands  of  men  whom  forms  com- 
pletely satisfied,  while  he  was  ever  hun- 


106  Heavenly  Heretics 

gry  for  the  spiritual  reality  behind  the 
forms.  Then,  too,  he  had  to  pay  the 
penalty  men  always  have  to  pay  who 
key  their  life  up  to  a  higher  pitch  than 
mere  expediency.  These  words  pen- 
cilled in  an  old-age  soliloquy  might  well 
be  in  the  heart  of  every  minister  for  the 
sake  of  admonition  and  example:  "I 
have  never  been  a  great  agitator,  never 
pulled  a  wire  to  get  the  will  of  men, 
never  did  a  politic  thing."  Men  do  not 
get  the  offices  of  life  who  walk  the  way 
that  Bushnell  walked.  But  they  get 
something  else  and  better;  a  few  true 
friends,  a  zest  for  life,  a  fine  sense  of 
the  fitness  of  things,  an  uplook  and  an 
outlook  vouchsafed  to  no  others,  a  peace 
the  world  can  neither  give  nor  take  away, 
and  that  goodwill  at  the  heart  of  life 
the  other  name  of  which  is  God. 

Through  practically  all  his  public  life 
Horace  Bushnell  was  an  invalid.  He 
never  learned  how  to  use  his  voice. 
Clergyman's  sore  throat  first  visited  him 
in  1839,  and  the  soreness  soon  began 
to  travel  lower.     He  broke  down  more 


Horace  Bushnell  107 

than  once,  and  after  1844  he  sought 
health  successively  in  Europe,  the 
West,  the  South,  and  Cuba,  and  in  1856 
in  California,  where  he  was  invited  to 
become  the  president  of  the  University 
of  California,  for  which  he  chose  the 
site.  Discouraged  by  the  persistence  of 
ill  health  which  was  accentuated  by  the 
fierceness  of  his  critics,  he  gave  up  his 
church  to  the  sorrow  of  his  people,  al- 
ways loyal  to  him  through  his  troubles 
and  unceasingly  sympathetic  with  him 
in  ill  health.  Then  still  hoping  against 
hope  for  better  health  he  spent  a  year 
or  two  in  Minnesota  and  at  Clifton 
Springs,  New  York,  and  in  1861  returned 
to  live  in  Hartford  till  his  death  in  1876. 
Though  no  longer  in  a  settled  pastorate 
he  was  as  busy  as  ever,  speaking,  writ- 
ing, serving  in  one  way  or  another  the 
higher  interests  of  his  city  and  his  land. 
Almost  as  versatile  as  Franklin,  he 
turned  his  hand  in  his  old  age  to  many 
things.  He  drained  a  city,  laid  out  a 
park,  planned  a  house  or  two,  taught 
the  public  a  few  salient  lessons  in  political 


108  Heavenly  Heretics 

economy,  and  incidentally  gave  the  Adi- 
rondack guides  some  useful  points  about 
the  woods  they  thought  they  knew  al- 
ready well  enough. 

His  last  days  were  his  happiest.  "  God 
spared  his  life  till  all  men  were  at  peace 
with  him."  Everybody  did  the  grand 
old  man  the  honour  which  was  due  him. 
His  appearance  on  the  street  was  the 
signal  for  hats  off  in  his  neighbourhood. 
Till  the  last,  spare,  muscular,  agile,  a 
spring  in  every  step,  his  white  hair 
stubbornly  atoss  above  the  eyes  that 
gleamed  with  kindly  humour,  his  tongue 
sharp  one  minute  with  keen  wit,  blunt 
with  homely  frankness  at  the  next,  in 
instant  touch  with  everybody  whom  he 
met,  and  never  quite  so  happy  as  when 
the  joust  of  argument  was  on  and  he  was 
mounted  for  the  hot  encounter,  Horace 
Bushnell  was  the  old  man  eloquent  of 
Hartford,  and  nothing  ever  pleased  him 
better  than  the  news  which  reached 
him  on  his  dying  bed  that  the  park 
he  had  conceived  was  to  be  named  in  his 
honour. 


Horace  Bushnell  109 

He  was  slow  to  die.  His  spirit  seemed 
to  tarry  overlong  in  this  world. 

"His  stainless  earthly  shell 
Was  worn  so  pure  and  thin, 
That  through  the  callow  angel  showed, 
Half-hatched  that  stirred  within." 

When  in  the  early  morning  of  Febru- 
ary 17,  1876,  while  the  stars  were  still 
shining  in  the  frosty  sky,  there  could 
be  no  longer  any  doubt  that  he  was 
passing,  the  family  gathered  round  his 
bedside  for  his  last  tender  blessing,  and 
this — so  characteristic  of  the  man — is 
what  they  heard:  "Well,  now,  we  are  all 
going  home  together;  and  I  say,  the 
Lord  be  with  you — and  in  grace — and 
peace — and  love — and  that  is  the  way 
I  have  come  along  home. " 

And  it  was. 


Besides  Bushnell's  own  writings,  there  are  two 
books  one  must  read  who  would  know  much  of 
Bushnell.  The  first,  which  appeared  last,  in 
1899,  is  Dr.  Munger's  biography,  the  only  full 
and  connected  account  ever  given  of  the  preacher 
and  theologian.  The  second,  prepared  by  his 
two  daughters  and  published  in  1880,  bears  the 
title  Life  and  Letters  of  Horace  Bushnell,  and  tells 
us  what  the  man  was  like  as  husband,  father, 
friend.  The  best  critical  estimate  of  Bushnell 
as  a  homiletical  genius  is  found  in  Brastow's 
Representative  Modern  Preachers,  ch.  iv.  His 
place  among  the  leaders  of  Progressive  Ortho- 
doxy is  pointed  out  by  Dr.  Washington  Gladden 
in  "Pioneers  of  Religious  Liberty,"  ch.  vii. 
About  Bushnell  as  a  literary  force  there  is  a  chap- 
ter in  Addison's  The  Clergy  in  American  Life 
and  Letters.  And  Dr.  Henry  Clay  Trumbull's 
recollections  of  him,  which  appeared  some  years 
ago  in  The  Sunday-School  Times  and  are  ad- 
mirably supplemented  in  Howard's  Life  Story 
of  Henry  Clay  Trumbull,  shed  many  illuminating 
side-lights  on  his  personality  and  preaching. 


no 


Phillips  Brooks 
1835-1893 


in 


"The  spirit  of  reverence  with  which  I  commenced  my 
work  has  grown  deeper  at  every  stage  of  my  investiga- 
tion."— A.  V.  G.  Allen. 

"I  have  known  a  number  of  the  men  we  call  great, — 
poets,  statesmen,  soldiers, — but  Phillips  was  the  only 
one  I  ever  knew  who  seemed  to  me  entirely  great  I" — 
S.  Weir  Mitchell. 

"Phillips  Brooks  is  not  only  the  greatest  preacher  in 
America,  he  is,  perhaps,  the  greatest  preacher  in  the 
world." — Edwin  D.  Mead,  in  1891. 

"In  this  blending  of  perfect  simplicity  of  treatment 
with  singular  fertility  and  elevation  of  thought,  no 
other  of  the  famous  preachers  of  the  generation  that 
is  now  vanishing  approached  him." — James  Bryce. 

"He  translated  the  terms  of  the  spiritual  of  the  past 
into  the  terms  of  the  spiritual  of  the  present." — Talcott 
Williams. 

"God  the  Father  loving  all  men,  man  the  child 
getting  near  to  his  Father,  those  were  the  thoughts 
that  formed  his  being,  and  inspired  his  tongue,  and 
crowned  with  glory  his  life  and  death." — Arthur 
Brooks. 

"The  great  truth  of  Jesus  Christ  is,  that  God  is 
pleading  with  every  soul,  not  merely  in  the  words 
which  we  read  from  His  book,  but  in  every  influence 
of  life." — Phillips  Brooks. 

"You  are  in  God's  world;  you  are  God's  child.  These 
things  you  cannot  change ;  the  only  rest  and  peace  and 
happiness  for  you  is  to  accept  them  and  rejoice  in 
them." — Phillips  Brooks. 


112 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

IT  was  to  the  Phillips-Exeter  boys  that 
Phillips  Brooks  in  1886  remarked 
of  the  great  man  as  a  type:  "  This  man, 
great  as  he  is,  is  of  the  same  human 
sort  that  I  am,  and  so  I  may  attain 
to  the  same  kind  of  greatness  which  he 
reached." 

But  neither  could  his  audience  then 
nor  can  the  readers  of  his  memorable 
address  on  Biography  now,  years  after 
his  taking  off,  find  in  the  words  he  used 
the  comfort  which  they  brought  to  him. 
For  after  all  is  said,  Phillips  Brooks  was 
different  from  most  of  us.  He  had  a 
unique  right,  not  ours,  to  claim  close 
kinship  with  the  world's  supremely  good 
and  great.  He  was  of  their  class.  When 
he  spoke  to  them,  it  was  deep  calling  unto 
deep.  When  he  spoke  for  them,  he  spoke 
as  a  representative  worthy  and  accept- 

"3 


ii4  Heavenly  Heretics 

able.  When  he  spoke  of  them  he  spoke 
as  one  having  authority,  which  indeed 
he  had  in  full. 

To  read  what  first-rate  men  dispas- 
sionate and  philosophical  have  said  of 
him  all  but  takes  your  breath  away. 
The  sad  news  that  Phillips  Brooks  was 
dead  crushed  Boston  into  silence  as 
unbearable  as  it  was  unutterable  until 
Dr.  George  A.  Gordon  struck  the  respon- 
sive chord  of  the  bereavement  in  the 
words : 

1 '  Never  to  the  mansions  where  the  mighty  rest, 
Since  their  foundations,  came  a  nobler  guest." 

Dr.  Holmes  a  little  later  placed  him 
first  among  peers,  ''the  ideal  minister  of 
the  American  gospel, "  and  Dr.  Weir 
Mitchell  a  while  ago  wrote  the  official 
biographer  of  Phillips  Brooks:  "I  have 
known  a  number  of  the  men  we  call 
great, — poets,  statesmen,  soldiers, — but 
Phillips  was  the  only  one  I  ever  knew 
who  seemed  to  me  entirely  great. " 

Elements  not  often  found  in  one  man 
dwelt   together   in  perfect   harmony   in 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS 
From  a  photograph  from  life 


Phillips  Brooks  115 

Phillips  Brooks.  There  was  physical 
bulk  towering  and  majestic,  intellect 
colossal  and  lavishly  endowed,  heart  ca- 
pacious, rich,  and  tender.  The  mental 
and  the  moral  nature  of  the  man  were 
so  nicely  blended  that  you  cannot  see 
where  one  left  off  and  the  other  began. 
"You  are  unable  to  tell" — to  quote  his 
words  concerning  Lincoln — "whether  in 
the  wise  acts  and  words  which  issue 
from  his  life  there  is  more  of  the  right- 
eousness that  comes  of  a  clear  con- 
science, or  of  the  sagacity  that  comes  of 
a  clear  brain. "  Nobody — and  many 
have  tried — has  ever  given  an  analysis 
of  his  character  so  accurate  as  he  him- 
self unwittingly  afforded  in  his  gradua- 
tion essay  at  the  Alexandria  Theological 
Seminary  in  1858,  when  in  speaking  of 
the  centralising  power  of  the  gospel,  he 
pictured  "  the  concentration  of  the  moral 
life  in  Christ :  the  Intellect  coming  up  to 
say  'Lord,  teach  me';  the  Heart  bringing 
its  tribute  of  loyalty  and  love;  the  Will 
with  bowed  head  echoing  the  first  Chris- 
tian question,  'What  wilt  thou  have  me 


n6  Heavenly  Heretics 

to  do?'  "  Nobody  except  perhaps  Phillips 
Brooks  has  ever  doubted  the  essential 
veracity  of  this  auto-photograph. 

He  continued  to  the  last  so  modest 
that  once  when  a  discussion  was  in  pro- 
gress as  to  the  emptiness  of  churches  he 
expressed  surprise  and  incredulity.  He 
even  ventured  to  remark,  "  I  go  about  a 
great  deal;  I  preach  everywhere;  and  I 
have  yet  to  see  an  empty  church. " 
When  men  complimented  him  upon  his 
sermons,  they  embarrassed  him.  When 
they  praised  his  deeds,  they  vexed  him. 
Under  criticism  often  unkind,  not  seldom 
malicious,  he  never  spoke  a  bitter  word. 
Under  calumny  cruel  and  vicious,  he 
never  lost  his  wonderful  self-control. 
He  had  his  faults.  He  must  have  had; 
he  was  a  man.  But  after  reading  every 
important  word  which  has  appeared  in 
print  about  him  from  the  obituary  notices 
to  Dr.  Allen's  biography,  I  would  not 
care  to  make  the  effort  to  point  out 
his  faults.  I  would  rather  say  of  him 
what  the  Unitarian  Chadwick  long  since 
said: 


Phillips  Brooks  117 

"Here  was  a  man  cast  in  such  generous  mould 
Of    body,  brain  and  conscience,   heart  and 
soul, 
That  if  till  now  we  never  had  been  told 

Of  an  eternal  life  and  perfect  goal 
Beyond  the  verge  of  this  our  mortal  space, 
Straightway  of  such  we  should  conceive,  and 
dare 
Believe  it  builded  in   God's    boundless   grace, 
After    this    man's    great    fashion,  high   and 
fair." 

It  is  Phillips  Brooks  the  preacher  who 
is  to-day  our  chief  concern.  And  what 
a  preacher  he  was!  "The  best  because 
the  most  edifying  of  preachers,"  is  the 
judgment  of  England's  present  represent- 
ative at  Washington.  Asked  "  How  does 
he  compare  with  your  great  preachers 
in  Scotland  and  England?"  the  late 
Professor  A.  B.  Bruce  of  Glasgow  Uni- 
versity answered: 

It  is  this  way:  our  great  preachers  take  into  the 
pulpit  a  bucket  full  or  half  full  of  the  Word  of 
God,  and  then,  by  the  force  of  personal  mechan- 
ism, they  attempt  to  convey  it  to  the  congrega- 
tion. But  this  man  is  just  a  great  water  main, 
attached  to  the  everlasting  reservoir  of  God's 


n8  Heavenly  Heretics 

truth  and  grace  and  love,  and  streams  of  life, 
by  a  heavenly  gravitation,  pour  through  him 
to  refresh  every  weary  soul. 


Let  us  go  back  some  twenty  years  and 
hear  him  preach  in  his  own  church  when 
he  was  at  the  fulness  of  his  fame.  The 
church  is  worth  our  visit  on  its  own 
account.  Completed  more  than  thirty 
years  ago,  it  easily  ranks  first  for  beauty 
and  impressiveness  among  the  churches 
of  New  England.  Modelled  after  the 
French  Romanesque,  without  a  spire, 
without  the  pointed  arch,  Trinity  Church 
seems  ever  to  be  calling  men  away  from 
conventional  Christianity  to  a  more  in- 
clusive faith  which  is  as  wide  in  concept 
and  in  application  as  is  life  itself.  Rich- 
ardson did  much  to  make  the  church 
what  it  now  is,  and  what  he  could  not  do 
La  Farge  with  his  elaborate  decorations 
and  Burne-Jones  with  his  glorious  win- 
dows did.  The  completed  church  ushered 
in  a  new  era  in  church  building  in  our 
land,  and  was  done  in  miniature  in  many 
a  community. 


Phillips  Brooks  119 

It  may  be  a  stormy  Sunday  afternoon 
on  which  we  pay  our  precious  visit  to 
the  church  of  Phillips  Brooks.  No  mat- 
ter; the  church  is  overfull.  It  always 
is,  whatever  winds  may  blow  or  storms 
may  come.  The  heavy  clouds  permit 
scant  light  to  enter  through  the  lofty 
mural  windows.  The  chancel,  vast  and 
free  of  all  adornments,  is  but  dimly 
lighted.  The  pulpit,  central  in  the 
thoughts  of  all,  stands  out  conspicuous 
beneath  its  necessary  sounding-board. 
The  congregation  is  as  choice  as  it  is 
representative.  Here  in  this  pew  near 
the  pulpit  is  the  noble  scion  of  an 
old  Boston  family,  the  "Dear  Bob"  of 
many  a  charming  letter  in  Dr.  Allen's 
book.  Not  far  away  is  the  Speaker,  in 
Daniel  Webster's  day,  of  the  House  at 
Washington,  and  as  faithful  in  support- 
ing Brooks  as  he  was  active  in  inducing 
him  to  come  to  Boston.  There  against 
that  column  immediately  before  the 
pulpit  stands  an  unimpassioned  editor,  un- 
complaining that  there  is  no  seat  for 
him,  and  afterwards  to  tell  me,  "  I  thought 


120  Heavenly  Heretics 

my  heart  would  leap  out  of  my  mouth 
as  I  listened  to  the  preacher." 

Here  and  there  throughout  the  con- 
gregation one  sees  a  distinguished  judge, 
a  score  of  college  professors,  several  scores 
of  students,  literary  folk  always  close  to 
Boston's  heart,  ultra  fashionables  taking 
their  religion  only  from  their  one  doctor 
and  in  dainty  doses  even  thus,  the  com- 
mon people  in  great  numbers  in  the 
gallery  and  down  below  who  always 
hear  the  master  gladly,  and  possibly 
among  them  the  poor  scrub-woman  who 
once  asked  the  preacher  if  he  would  allow 
her  daughter  to  be  married  in  the  chapel 
because  the  big  church,  she  said,  "is 
not  for  the  likes  of  me,"  and  received 
from  him  the  prompt  reply:  "  Oh,  yes,  it 
is,  for  the  likes  of  you,  and  the  likes  of  me, 
and  the  likes  of  everyone. " 

The  choir  and  congregation  are  sing- 
ing the  last  stanza  of  the  hymn  before 
the  sermon.  Out  of  the  dim  darkness 
of  the  chancel  a  kingly  figure  sweeps 
toward  the  pulpit,  mounts  the  steps, 
looks  out,  before  he  announces  his  text, 


Phillips  Brooks  121 

for  a  brief,  self-conscious  moment,  with 
solemn  face  across  the  sea  of  living 
faces  soon  in  the  passion  of  his  preach- 
ing to  melt  "together  into  a  unit,  as  of 
one  impressive,  pleading  man. " 

Simply  to  see  him  in  the  pulpit  is  a  ser- 
mon. Six  feet  four  inches  high,  a  body  of 
such  fine  proportions  that  others  seem  un- 
dersized beside  him,  a  noble  brow  crowned 
by  a  wealth  of  grey-brown  hair  and  finely- 
chiselled  features  lighted  by  eyes  lumin- 
ous and  large,  which  at  one  moment  glow 
with  indignation  at  some  heinous  sin  of 
thought  or  word  or  deed,  and  at  the 
next  grow  soft  and  tender  with  the  per- 
suasiveness of  pleading  love,  a  generous 
mouth  with  beautifully  moulded  lips 
formed  specially,  one  observes,  to  speak 
the  gracious  tidings  of  peace  on  earth, 
good-will  to  men.  Like  Justice  Harlan 
we  cannot,  even  if  we  would,  take  our 
eyes  off  him.  Like  Justice  Harlan  we 
whisper  to  ourselves,  "the  most  beauti- 
ful man  I  ever  saw. "  Now  at  last  we 
understand  why  men  and  women  every- 
where are  wont  to  lose  their  hearts  to 


122  Heavenly  Heretics 

Phillips  Brooks.  Who  can  do  other- 
wise that  looks  upon  that  king  of  men, 
like  Saul  of  old,  "  higher  than  any  of  the 
people,  from  his  shoulders  and  upward?" 
Deaf  from  sheer  amazement  we  look 
and  while  we  look  he  speaks — speaks 
without  notes.  Not  willingly  does  he 
extemporise;  only  because  the  multiply- 
ing of  demands  upon  him  in  his  later 
years  leaves  no  time  for  writing.  He 
vows  in  private  conversation  that  he 
means  to  go  back  to  the  written  sermon ; 
no  other  seems  to  him  in  the  long  run 
altogether  worthy.  Now  the  solitary 
pulpit  light  becomes  the  sole  illumina- 
tion of  the  church.  Its  whole  flame  is 
cast  upon  the  red  cushion  and  the 
preacher's  side  and  face,  glow  also  with 
increasing  fervour  as  out  of  the  stillness 
and  the  darkness,  out  of  the  central 
gloom  of  the  great  building,  a  voice  comes 
full  and  strong,  swift  and  impetuous,  a 
torrent  of  two  hundred  words  and  more  a 
minute  to  the  dismay  of  the  stenographers 
obliged  to  work  in  pairs  and  seldom  even 
thus  successfully.     Every  cyclonic  sen- 


Phillips  BrooKS  123 

tence  is  freighted  heavily  with  thought. 
The  head  is  thrown  high  up  and  back,  and 
now  and  then,  as  though  impatient  of  the 
slowness    and    inaptitude   of   the   vocal 
organs   for   such  unusual  speaking,  the 
head     is     flung     sidewise     in     protest. 
Thought,    imagery,    parable,    argument, 
exhortation,  leap  out   and  on  in  quick 
succession,  linked  fast  together,  like   a 
vestibuled  express  train  sweeping  all  bar- 
riers away  as   it  makes  with  matchless 
and  majestic  speed  toward  its  terminus. 
No  mental  luxury  in  listening  to  such 
a  preacher!      Even  the  trained  listener 
grows    weary    under    strain    like    this. 
Most    hearers    could   not    follow    at    all 
were  not  the  language  lucid,  the  diction 
simple,  the  style  like  Milton's  large  as 
the  man,  the  whole  treatment  so  inclu- 
sive that  each  may  find  in  it  some  lesson 
for  himself.     He  speaks  no  merely  bright 
or  clever  words.       His  voice  is  solemn 
with  the  seriousness  of  its  heaven-sent 
message,  but  it  is  singularly  sweet  and 
mellow,    even    in    those    higher    flights 
where  voices  usually  grow  strident.  Every 


124  Heavenly  Heretics 

device  known  to  the  pulpit  orator  he 
eschews  and  he  despises.  He  seldom 
makes  a  gesture.  He  never  uses  wit  or 
pathos,  and  so  he  never  ventures  near 
the  edge  of  bathos  or  sentimentalism. 
His  illustrations  are  mere  intimations. 
"  Hurling  out  ripe  premise  after  premise  " 
— to  quote  a  reporter  for  the  New  York 
Tribune  in  1884 — 

suggesting,  hinting,  adumbrating  great  per- 
spectives of  thought,  as  heat  lightning  palpitat- 
ing through  the  clouds  silently  opens  up  beautiful 
vistas  that  flit  like  thoughts  in  and  out  of  sight, 
the  wonderful  torrent  of  this  overcharged  man 
rushes  and  deepens  and  broadens  and  all  the 
time  hastens  with  a  speed  that  fairly  dazes  the 
brain.  ...  It  is  not  fever,  nor  excitement,  nor 
mere  enthusiasm.  It  is  rather  the  head  pressure 
of  a  vast  reservoir  plunging  and  fighting  for  de- 
liverance. His  great  deep  eyes,  like  Webster's, 
glow  and  shoot  fire!  He  struggles  with  the 
torrent  that  assails  him,  and  at  times  seems  in 
pitiful  straits  to  keep  his  footing. 

But  he  keeps  it.  He  neither  flies  the 
track  like  an  ungovernable  train,  nor  is 
swept  from  his  course  by  the  over- 
crowding feelings  and  ideas  that  surge  up 


Phillips  Brooks  125 

within  him.  There  is  nowhere  in  his 
preaching,  whatever  the  occasion  be, 
however  urgent  and  insinuating  the  temp- 
tation, any  evidence  of  hasty  preparation 
or  vague  thinking.  There  is  always  ex- 
actness, analysis,  unity  of  subject;  the 
total  impression  is  definite;  the  central 
theme  stands  out  clearly  from  the  care- 
fully related  parts.  The  whole  effort  is 
artistic.  It  gives  an  impression  of  the 
accuracy  with  which  a  great  force  moves 
rapidly  but  with  the  swiftness  of  a 
perfect  aim. 

What  is  his  text  to-day  ?  No  matter. 
His  sermon  always  is  the  same.  Amidst 
countless  voices  of  despair,  the  woeful 
wailings  of  misery,  the  manifold  mani- 
festations of  indifference  which  lift  un- 
welcome heads  on  every  hand  to  silence 
or  to  drown  his  utterance,  his  voice  rises 
above  them  all,  proclaiming  hope  and  the 
blessedness  of  life  itself,  the  sacredness 
of  man  as  such  and  the  essential  spiritu- 
ality of  all  man's  simpler  and  saner 
interests. 

In    every    sermon,    whatever   be    the 


126  Heavenly  Heretics 

text,  he  seems  ever  to  be  saying:  It 
is  all  true,  this  old  faith  of  ours;  only 
it  has  a  deeper,  larger,  grander  meaning 
and  diviner  beauty  than  we  have  ever 
dreamed  it  has.  Take  your  creeds  and 
doctrines  out  into  a  brighter  light.  In- 
terpret them  in  terms  of  God's  undying 
love  and  Christ's  blessed  Incarnation  and 
the  Holy  Spirit's  ever-present  help  and 
comfort.  Take  God  to  be  your  Father 
and  Jesus  Christ  to  be  your  Brother 
and  the  Holy  Spirit  for  your  faithful 
Friend,  and  believe  that  you  would  not 
have  the  privilege  of  such  fellowship 
were  you  not  worthy  of  it.  Believe  in 
yourself  because  you  are  the  son  of  God. 
"  Count  always  your  highest  moments 
your  truest  moments."  Believe  that  in 
the  time  when  you  are  most  spiritually, 
minded  then  you  are  your  truest  self, 
and  strive  to  have  no  other  moods  or 
moments.  It  may  go  ill  with  you  at 
first.  But  have  no  fear.  God  is  on 
your  side.  Take  one  step  at  a  time,  and 
He  will  point  out  what  comes  next. 
"  Be  the  noblest  man  that  your  present 


Phillips  Brooks  127 

faith,  poor  and  weak  and  imperfect  as 
it  is,  can  make  you  to  be.  Live  up  to 
your  present  growth,  your  present  faith. 
So,  and  so  only,  as  you  take  the  next 
straight  step  forward,  as  you  stand 
strong  where  you  are  now,  so  only  can 
you  think  the  curtain  will  draw  back 
and  there  will  be  revealed  to  you  what 
lies  beyond." 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  men  go  out 
from  such  preaching  with  a  new  grip 
on  life,  with  a  new  zest  for  living? 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  men  come  from 
Phillips  Brooks's  church  singing  those 
words  of  Browning  which  he  loved 
well  and  often  quoted  in  his  sermons? 

"How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living! 
How  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses 
Forever  in  joy!" 

Into  the  hearts  of  men  discouraged 
Phillips  Brooks  comes  in  every  sermon ; 
and  lo!  men  lift  their  drooping  heads. 
Into  the  hearts  of  men  so  many  times 
defeated  in  the  war  with  sin  that  they 


128  Heavenly  Heretics 

have  lost  all  hope  of  victory  he  comes ;  and 
lo !  the  fight  is  on  again.  Into  the  hearts 
of  men  and  women  crushed  beneath  some 
sorrow  or  disaster  he  comes ;  and  lo !  they 
wipe  their  tears  away  and  take  up  their 
burdens  with  new  resolution.  No  won- 
der that  we  thrill  when  we  hear  Phillips 
Brooks.  He  uncovers  all  that  is  best 
and  deepest  in  us  and  makes  us  glad  to 
be  alive. 

Would  you  know  the  story  of  his  life? 
He  can  answer  for  himself:  "  I  have  little 
to  say.  I  have  had  no  wife,  no  children, 
no  particular  honours,  no  serious  mis- 
fortune, and  no  adventures  worth  speak- 
ing of. "  And  yet  he  had  a  history. 
He  was  not  the  creature  of  a  day.  Born 
in  Boston  in  1835  of  a  long  line  of  preach- 
ers on  either  side  the  family,  born  in  an 
ideal  home,  "that  love  to  Christ  which 
glowed  in  his  words  and  flashed  in  his 
eye,"  says  his  younger  brother,  "was 
caught  from  a  mother's  lips  and  was  read 
with  boyish  eyes  as  the  central  power  of  a 
mother's  soul  and  life. "  He  entered  Har- 
vard at  fifteen,  "  a  tall  and  slender  strip- 


Phillips  Brooks  129 

ling, "  says  Mr.  Joseph  Choate,  who  was 
at  Harvard  with  him,  "towering  above 
all  his  companions  with  that  magnificent 
head,  that  majestic  face,  already  grave 
and  serious,  but  with  those  great,  brown 
eyes  lighting  it,  beaming  with  brotherly 
love  and  tenderness. "  He  did  his  les- 
sons decently,  but  he  read  a  great  deal 
more  than  he  studied,  and  he  excelled  in 
essay  writing  rather  than  in  public 
speaking. 

His  first  thought  after  leaving  college 
was  to  teach,  but  as  usher  in  the  Boston 
Latin  School,  his  failure,  thanks  to  forty 
unruly  boys  with  shot  and  snowballs  and 
on  mischief  bound,  was  so  abject  and 
so  disheartening  that  he  turned  despair- 
ingly toward  the  calling  to  which  his 
mother  had  dedicated  him  in  prayer  long 
years  before.  Of  his  three  years  at  the 
Alexandria  Theological  Seminary  from 
1856  to  1859,  we  know  much  from  his 
interesting  letters  home.  His  fellow  stu- 
dents still  delight  in  reminiscence  of 
his  sayings  and  his  doings  there.  He  stud- 
ied harder  there,  and  read  more  widely. 


130  Heavenly  Heretics 

He  took  full  notes  of  all  the  books  he 
read,  kept  a  record  of  his  developing 
ideas,  and  even  chronicled  in  verse  his 
deeper  feelings.  It  was  a  time  of  rich 
and  swift  development,  and  in  his  note- 
books one  finds  the  germ  and  outline 
of  almost  all  he  ever  after  preached. 

He  accepted  with  some  diffidence  and 
self-depreciation  a  call  to  be  the  rector 
of  the  Church  of  the  Advent  in  Phila- 
delphia and  began  work  as  soon  as  he 
was  graduated  in  1859.  His  preaching 
won  for  him  immediate  recognition. 
Calls  came  from  the  North  and  even 
from  the  Pacific  coast,  and  in  1862  he 
moved  to  Holy  Trinity  Church.  There 
he  stayed  till  1869,  and  in  those  seven 
years  made  a  reputation  to  which  he 
added  little  in  the  years  that  followed. 
He  was  publicist  as  well  as  preacher, 
and  his  services  to  the  nation  in  those 
war  days  were  second  only  to  the  services 
of  Beecher.  Now  and  then  he  paid  a 
visit  to  his  home  in  Boston  and  many 
who  heard  his  prayer  at  the  Harvard 
Commemoration    service  July  21,  1865, 


Phillips  Brooks  131 

count  it  the  effort  of  his  life.  Colonel 
Higginson  says  that, 

When  the  "Amen"  came,  it  seemed  to  him  that 
the  occasion  was  over,  that  the  harmonies  of 
the  music  had  been  anticipated,  that  the  poem 
had  been  read  and  the  oration  already  uttered, 
that  after  such  a  prayer  every  other  exercise 
might  well  be  dispensed  with. 

Boston  never  swerved  a  hair's-breadth 
after  that  from  her  purpose  to  reclaim 
her  own,  loaned  to  Virginia  for  a  time 
and  then  to  Philadelphia.  She  brought 
him  back  in  1869,  made  him  rector  of 
her  leading  church,  and  her  spokesman 
in  the  better  things  for  which  she  long 
has  stood.  Was  an  address  wanted 
for  the  anniversary  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association?  He  was  asked 
to  make  it.  Was  a  speaker  needed  to 
commemorate  in  fitting  terms  the  two 
hundredth  birthday  of  King's  Chapel? 
No  one  thought  of  anybody  except  Phil- 
lips Brooks.  Did  the  Perkins  Institute  for 
the  Blind  need  another  member  on  its 
board  of  managers  ?  Phillips  Brooks  was 
chosen  by  a  vote  unanimous. 


132  Heavenly  Heretics 

Harvard  made  the  largest  claims  upon 
his  time  and  energy.  Why  should  she 
not?  He  was  her  child,  her  boast,  her 
glory.  No  preacher  ever  had  such  power 
over  Harvard  students.  They  thronged 
the  chapel  when  he  was  announced  to 
speak.  They  gathered  round  him  at 
receptions.  They  gave  him  love  and 
loyalty.  They  came  to  him  for  help 
in  trouble  and  for  absolution  in  their  sins, 
and  they  never  came  in  vain.  After  a 
night  of  folly  a  group  of  his  young  friends 
were  huddled  about  a  dying  fire,  unfit 
for  duty,  ashamed  to  look  each  other  in 
the  face,  when  their  great  friend  came 
in  by  chance  to  make  a  morning  call. 
No  word  of  censure  fell  upon  their  ears; 
only  a  cheery  greeting,  a  little  friendly 
converse;  and  then  as  he  was  leaving 
he  laid  his  great  brown  hand  tenderly 
upon  their  leader's  head,  and  softly 
said,  "Well,  boys,  it  does  not  make 
you  feel  any  better,  does  it?"  It  was 
not  much  he  did  and  said;  but  it  was 
quite  enough;  it  reached  them;  it 
touched  them;  they   arose   as  one  and 


Phillips  Brooks  133 

followed  him  straight  back  to  duty  and 
to  God. 

Never  had  people  a  more  devoted 
minister.  He  could  not  give  himself  in 
later  years  to  routine  visiting.  And  yet 
his  heart  laid  on  itself  the  lowliest 
duties.  Yes,  the  story  is  true  that  he 
sent  a  poor  tired  mother  out  to  get 
some  air  while  with  book  in  hand  he, 
who  never  was  a  father,  cared  with  all 
a  father's  fondness  for  her  sick  baby. 
People  asked  service  from  him  who 
should  have  sought  it  from  another. 
Letters  came  by  every  post  and  from  al- 
most every  point.  One  wanted  money, 
another  counsel;  another  wanted  to  ex- 
press a  heartfelt  gratitude  for  some 
spoken  or  some  written  word  of  his. 
Every  letter  was  at  once  acknowledged 
in  a  handwriting  as  beautiful  as  the 
style  was  charming.  No  man  could  be 
busier  than  Phillips  Brooks.  No  man 
was  more  completely  given  over  to  the 
service  of  his  fellows  in  God's  Name 
and  for  Christ's  sake. 

In  1 89 1,  his  friends  proposed  to  make 


134  Heavenly  Heretics 

him  Bishop  of  his  Diocese.  But  there 
was  opposition.  For  the  first  time  in 
his  life  he  knew  that  some  spoke  ill  of 
him.  No  longer  could  his  friends,  fear- 
ful lest  his  universal  popularity  might 
prove  after  all  to  be  a  fundamental 
weakness  in  his  character,  fling  at  him 
the  Master's  warning:  "Woe  unto  you 
when  all  men  shall  speak  well  of  you! 
for  so  did  their  fathers  to  the  false  pro- 
phets. "  It  was  made  painfully  apparent 
that  he  had  enemies.  Some  charged  him 
with  insincerity;  others  with  disloyalty. 
Much  was  made  of  his  preaching  in  a 
Congregational  pulpit,  and  of  his  welcom- 
ing a  Unitarian  clergyman  into  his  church, 
not  into  his  pulpit. 

He  was  asked  to  show  his  Churchman- 
ship  and  thus  dissolve  their  doubts.  How 
could  he  show  his  Churchmanship?  It 
was  like  asking  a  man  to  show  his  heart 
that  men  might  know  how  pure  he  was. 
The  only  word  he  spoke  was  the  word 
his  Master  spoke :  "  Why  askest  thou  me  ? 
Ask  them  which  heard  me,  What  I  have 
said  unto  them :  behold,  they  know  what 


Phillips  Brooks  135 

I  have  said."  And  they  did  know. 
They  flung  back  all  the  charges  made 
against  him.  They  pointed  out  that  he 
had  never  violated  any  canon  of  the 
Church.  They  referred  to  his  profound 
belief,  as  voiced  in  scores  of  published 
sermons,  in  God,  in  Christ,  in  the  Holy 
Spirit,  in  the  Church,  in  life  everlast- 
ing. To  the  charge  that  he  did  not 
believe  the  Bible  is  inspired,  they  an- 
swered back  in  his  own  words: 

The  great  truth  of  Jesus  Christ  is  this,  that  God 
is  pleading  with  every  soul  not  merely  in  the 
words  which  we  read  from  His  Book  but  in 
every  influence  of  life;  and,  in  these  unknown 
influences  which  are  too  subtle  for  us  to  under- 
stand or  perceive,  God  is  forever  seeking  after 
the  souls  of  His  children. 

It  was  a  critical  moment  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Church.  It  makes  one  shud- 
der even  now  to  recall  how  near  she  came 
to  losing  the  chance  to  bestow  her  best 
gift  on  her  greatest  son.  She  hesitated; 
but  only  for  a  few  brief  weeks.  On  the 
morning  of  October  14,  1 891,  he  made  the 
promise  of  conformity  as  Bishop  of  the 


136  Heavenly  Heretics 

Diocese  of  Massachusetts  in  tones  so 
reverent  and  impressive  that  whatever 
doubt  there  was  of  his  disloyalty  was 
forever  dissipated. 

How  he  filled  the  office  everybody 
knows.  He  did  the  work  with  joy  and 
without  self-indulgence.  He  was  busier 
than  ever.  He  was  afraid  that  official 
dignity  would  so  hedge  him  around 
that  he  would  lose  some  of  his  older 
friends.  "Don't  desert  me,"  he  wrote 
Dr.  Cooper.  He  was  simple,  frank,  and 
even  boyish  to  the  last.  Bishop  Mc- 
Vickar  told  me  that  once  in  the  streets 
of  Lucerne  after  some  new  revelation 
of  Bishop  Brooks's  boyishness  he  said 
to  him,  "It  is  strange,  Brooks,  to  think 
of  you  as  a  bishop."  The  naive  answer 
came  at  once.  "It  is  so  strange  that 
sometimes  when  I  am  putting  on  my 
clothes  I  have  to  stop  and  laugh." 
Those  who  knew  him  best  saw  many 
changes  in  him  in  the  first  year  of  his 
Bishopric.  They  were  alarmed  at  his 
reckless  spending  of  himself.  Toward 
the  last  he  felt  the  strain  himself.     "  He 


Phillips  Brooks  137 

was  ready  to  do  the  preaching  and 
make  the  visitations,  but  the  social 
pressure,  and  the  pressure  of  unneces- 
sary duties  and  unreasonable  people, 
wore  him  out. "  Boston  was  killing  her 
favourite  son  with  kindness. 

No  one  was  surprised  when  he  broke 
down,  but  no  one  was  prepared  for  the 
heart-breaking  news  which  came  January 
23,  1893,  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  dead. 
He  had  been  ill  but  three  days.  Not 
even  the  doctor  dreamed  that  a  bad 
cold  would  turn  into  diphtheria.  Bos- 
ton was  inconsolable.  All  America 
mourned.  England  was  more  than  sym- 
pathetic, for  he  had  preached  in  Eng- 
land many  a  summer.  Praise  seemed 
feeble.  Panegyric  was  speedily  exhausted. 
Sorrow  found  its  truest  voice  in  unvoiced 
silence,  and  for  many  a  day  in  secret 
visits  to  Mount  Auburn  cemetery,  where 
they  laid  his  body  down  to  rest 
among  the  ones  he  loved  the  best,  and 
in  such  modest  tributes  as  this,  which 
Phillips  Brooks,  were  he  alive,  would 
doubtless  love  more  than  any  formal  set 


i38  Heavenly  Heretics 

of  resolutions  or  any   journalistic  pero- 
ration: 

"Pausing  beside  the  master's  grave,  I  heard 

Low,  anxious  notes,  like  a  beseeching  prayer, 
And,  as  I  listened,  lo,  a  little  bird, 

A  chicadee,  was  nesting  there. 
Had  that  great  heart  so  recently  consigned 

Unto  the  earth  within  Mount  Auburn's  space, 
Quickened  the  very  iron,  till  it  brought 

Forth  loveliness  and  grace? 
Surely  in  all  that  city  of  the  dead, 

There  was  no  fitter  place  for  thee  to  rest, 
To  rear  thy  little  brood  so  cherished, 

Than  near  that  tender  breast. 
O  little  bird!  bird  of  the  whole  year  round, 

Perennial  blossom  of  our  northern  year  — 
God's  peace  be  with  thee,  aye,  the  peace  he 
found 

Who  slumbers  near. 
May  no  rude  hand  thy  confidence  betray, 

But  still  environed  by  that  wondrous  love, 
Sing  long  and  low  and  sweetly,  all  the  day 

His  grave  above." 


It  is  almost  presumptuous  to  suggest  the  lead- 
ing books  to  read  concerning  Phillips  Brooks. 
The  volumes  of  his  sermons  and  Dr.  Allen's 
large  and  lofty  biography  are  literature,  and  will 
be  read  as  long  as  men  are  interested  in  America's 
supreme  preacher.  There  are,  however,  several 
small  biographies  or  dissertations  which  deserve 
special  mention:  notably  those  by  Bishop  Law- 
rence, M.  A.  DeWolfe  Howe,  and  John  K. 
Hastings;  Chapter  V  in  Brastow's  Representative 
American  Preachers,  and  Chapter  X.  in  Addison's 
The  Clergy  in  American  Life  and  Letters;  the 
sermons  preached  by  Revs.  Edward  Abbott  and 
Leverett  Bradley,  and  the  magazine  articles  by 
Dr.  Allen,  Dr.  Arthur  Brooks,  and  Julius  H. 
Ward.  Dr.  Talcott  Williams's  comprehensive 
collection  of  magazine  articles  and  newspaper 
clippings  contains  many  contemporary  evidences 
of  Phillips  Brooks's  character  and  influence 
which  I  have  not  found  elsewhere. 


i39 


A  marshalling  of  the  evidence  pro  and  con, 
A  summing  up  and  an  impartial  judgment 

Christian  Science 

The  Faith  and  Its  Founder 

By  Revo  Lyman  P.  Powell 

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"  A  volume  which  is  not  the  less  destructive  for  its 
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Send  for  descriptive  circular 

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NEW  YORK  LONDON 


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The  Bishop  of  California. 


The 
Emmanuel    Movement 

In  a  New  England  Town 

A  Systematic  Account  of  Experiments  and  Reflec- 
tions Designed  to  Determine  the  Proper 
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the  sick  in  accordance  with  the  Emmanuel  precedents. 

"Valuable  because  of  its  sane  and  reasonable  treatment 
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Rev,  L.  Ward  Brigham,  All  Souls'  Church,  Brooklyn, 


The  Art  of  Natural 


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The  Philosophy  of 
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being.  Mr.  Kirkham's  work  distances  its  competitors  in 
the  field  by  combining  certain  qualities  which  are  the  con- 
dition of  excellence  and  practical  serviceableness  in  the 
chosen  sphere  of  this  book  :  it  is  firmly  founded  upon  a 
rock  of  philosophy;  the  author's  sanity  and  common-sense 
banish  all  extreme  and  fantastic  claims  that  fly  in  the  face 
of  reason  and  experience  ;  the  thought  is  reduced  to  the 
simplest  form,  and  is  free  from  technical  terms;  the  ideas 
are  easily  grasped  and  put  into  practice;  and  there  is  an 
extraordinary  lucidity,  directness,  and  vigor  in  style,  struct- 
ure, and  manner  of  presentation. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 


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Date  Due 

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